Pandering to Fans

Zoo Nut was there Saturday. No zoo opening is complete without him.

Maryanne Simons, a bank employee from Castaic, was there too. She owns 2,000 stuffed pandas and haunted the Los Angeles Zoo for days when pandas visited in 1984.

No way was Simons going to miss the debut of Shi Shi and Bai Yun, giant pandas now on display at the San Diego Zoo. Ditto with Jane Holtz of Whittier, who decorated her baby’s room with panda paraphernalia.

“I could stare at them all day,” Simons said.

“They’re beautiful,” Holtz said.

John and Bev Hammond of San Diego wore their panda sweatshirts from the National Zoo in Washington, the only other zoo in the United States to have a giant panda, a lonely male whose mate died several years ago.

“They’re awesome,” said Bev Hammond, an administrative assistant at a local Baptist church, upon glimpsing Shi Shi and Bai Yun.

Annette Conway brought her sons, Todd, 10, and Sean, 12. As a psychologist, she is intrigued by the allure the white-and-black mammals from central China have held for the American public ever since the first panda came to the United States in the 1930s.

“They seem so shy,” Conway said. “They’re big and fluffy and almost unreal looking. They’re wonderful.”

Ted Raskin, a retired Marine Corps master gunnery sergeant, wanted to provide some encouragement for the reproductive task that lies ahead for Shi Shi and Bai Yun. He remembers when the San Diego Zoo had visiting pandas in 1987 and 1988.

“The habitat is much more natural this time,” he said. “We’re all here to cheer them on to do their duty: sex, sex, sex.”

Make no mistake: that phenomenon that zookeepers call “panda-mania” is back. No animal in the history of U.S. zoos brings the crowds and the awe-struck response of pandas.

“People are almost reverential when they walk in,” said zoo President Bill Fox.

After five years of planning and geopolitical wrangling, Shi Shi and Bai Yun arrived in San Diego from Shanghai in mid-September and went on display Friday after a quarantine.

On Saturday, Gerald W. Murrie, a.k.a. Zoo Nut (it’s on his business cards, phone listing and license plate), came to take a look. A retired mobile home park owner, Zoo Nut spends five days a week at the zoo. Has for years.

“It’s good, very good,” he said of the enclosure that cost $1.3 million to build.

For panda collectors, the zoo’s panda store is heaven come to Earth: panda pictures, panda postcards, panda earrings, panda candy, panda T-shirts, panda towels, panda figurines, panda tote bags, panda golf balls, panda patches, panda jackets, panda hats, panda socks, panda posters, panda pajamas for kids, and 40--count ‘em 40--varieties of stuffed pandas.

The pandas’ native appeal notwithstanding, the zoo has cautioned the public that Shi Shi and Bai Yun are not performers like Basi and Yuan Yuan, who were here for 200 days in 1987 and 1988. Basi and Yuan Yuan, on cue from their Chinese handlers, would do balancing tricks, play with balls and ride tricycles, much to the crowd’s delight.

There may be days when only one panda is on display. There may be days when keepers decide neither panda is up to being in public. Zoo visitors are urged to call the zoo’s panda hotline, 888 MY PANDA.

The goal of the 12-year stay--for which the zoo will pay $1 million a year to China for panda research and habitat preservation--is to allow scientists to better understand the pandas: their method of communicating through “vocalizations,” their use of scent marking, their fluctuating hormones and their aloof personalities.

Bai Yun, who was born in captivity five years ago and now weighs 213 pounds, is frisky, curious and given to climbing trees and scooting down backward. She loves forward rolls.

“‘She’s a typical teenager: high on life,” said Carmi Penny, the zoo’s curator of mammals.

Shi Shi, who weighs 218 pounds and is between 11 and 15 years old, is more sedate. He eschews tree climbing. He has scars from a fight with another male in the wild before he was found by villagers in 1992 and taken to a panda preserve.

“He looks like we’d look after a bar fight,” Penny said.

Although scientists in China and San Diego hope fervently that Shi Shi and Bai Yun become parents, the two animals have yet to meet. One reason for the panda’s perilously low population--less than 1,000 in the wild--is their dicey mating habit.

The female panda is in season for only one or two days each spring. One of the decisions yet to be made by zookeepers is how long before Bai Yun’s estrus should she be introduced to Shi Shi. Too late and she might reject him. Too soon and she might get bored with him.

And then there is Shi Shi. Because male pandas create sperm only when the female is in season, his potency level is unknown.

Also unknown is how interested or adept Shi Shi will be. While in captivity in China, he was kept separate from females, and any rutting he did in the wild went unrecorded.

“I saw him sniffing at the fence between the enclosures,” said Bev Hammond. “I think that’s a good sign.”