There were problems with her heart that weren?t getting better. She weighed 320 pounds. One can only imagine the toll taken by so many years of cloying attention, all the beguiled admirers staring and cooing and craning to get close to her. The press was always sniffing around for new angles. Of course, there was her age.
Forty sounds painfully young ? but, then, she was a gorilla. Once you?re past 37, you need to consider putting your affairs in order.
And so it was sad but not entirely surprising when word came on Sunday of the passing of Pattycake, the Bronx Zoo gorilla who had long reigned as one of the city?s more acclaimed tourist attractions. Jim Breheny, the zoo?s director, said she had been discovered around 8 a.m. by a worker in the zoo?s Congo Gorilla Forest. Apparently, she went peacefully, in her sleep. Even at 40, her looks were still pretty much intact.
For a gorilla, she had had quite a life. ?She was a story that captivated people,? Mr. Breheny said.
She earned a superstar?s distinction and heaps of publicity right at birth, on Sept. 3, 1972, being that she was the first gorilla born in New York City, as opposed to, say, Cameroon or Gabon or Equatorial Guinea. It was an excellent Manhattan address ? the Central Park Zoo. Her furry face served as a bit of a respite at a time when the city found itself grappling with high crime rates and an intensifying financial crisis.
Another gorilla, Hodari, was born just a month later at the Bronx Zoo, and he never got the press she did.
In every sense, Pattycake?s arrival was a surprise. Zoo workers had been unaware that Lulu, her mother, was even pregnant until one day she matter-of-factly produced a bundle of dark fur. Back then, it was still relatively rare for gorillas to give birth in captivity.
Gorilla babies were typically raised by humans. But Pattycake, a western lowland gorilla, a species classified as ?critically endangered,? lived with Lulu and her father, Kongo. The housing wasn?t ideal; the gorillas shared the Lion House.
Stardom enveloped her at once. The Daily News conducted a contest to name her, attracting an estimated 33,000 entries. Zoo attendance soared.
One devotee remembered that ?seeing her was like seeing a movie star.?
Adrian Savonije, 45, who was touring the zoo on Monday with his children, said he had visited Pattycake since he was a child. ?I grew up with her,? he said. ?She was a big attraction here, a little mini New York landmark.?
There were initial concerns about her mother?s ability to raise her, Lulu being just 8, and caged, but things seemed to work out. When Pattycake was 6 months old, though, there was a frightening accident. She was squatting with her right arm slung through the bars separating the cage she occupied with Lulu and the neighboring cage of Kongo, who sometimes got a bit rough. Kongo playfully grabbed her arm. Either out of parental rivalry or mere playfulness, her mother scooped her up, inadvertently fracturing Pattycake?s right humerus.
It became one of the best-known broken arms in history. The public hung on every ensuing development.
There was an hourlong operation at New York Medical College. The arm was put in a cast, and later in a sling. She was moved to the far larger Bronx Zoo to recuperate. She slept on a cot, was fed infant formula in a bottle and wore a vest, and cloth nappies.
While Pattycake was convalescing, a full-fledged, two-borough custody battle erupted between the two zoos. The Bronx Zoo found her to be undernourished and said she had intestinal parasites. Her mother, the zoo believed, just wasn?t doing her job.
To resolve the custody fight, a referee was brought in: Dr. Ronald D. Nadler, a specialist well-versed in gorilla reproduction from the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta. While Lulu might not have qualified as gorilla mother of the year, he concluded, she was more than up to the task of providing Pattycake with the best chance of developing ?the normal repertoire of a gorilla.?
Three months after the accident, Pattycake returned to the Central Park Zoo. There was a well-chronicled reunion with her parents, with conspicuous emotion on display all around. On Pattycake?s first birthday, her parents celebrated with her, and a banana layer birthday cake. Birthday cards funneled in from as far away as California. During the party, more cake found its way into Pattycake?s fur than into her mouth. It was reported that her father behaved like a ?caged beast.?
Her parents saw her through adolescence, but then in 1983, when the Central Park Zoo was undergoing renovation, she was moved permanently to the Bronx Zoo.
Such was her fame that two books were written about her: ?Gorilla Baby: The Story of Pattycake? and ?Gentle Gorilla: The Story of Pattycake.?
Innumerable children became smitten with the gorilla, and later transferred that allegiance to their own children. John Bulger, 49, first saw her as a child. As a parent, he takes his son, John Jr., to the zoo twice a month, and they had always checked in on Pattycake. ?There?s no better day to spend as a child,? he said.
She was a robust, big-boned female, so much so that those unacquainted with her often mistook her for a male ? suspicions they no doubt realized were best kept to themselves. Pattycake lived with 18 other gorillas, and volunteers said that she gave the younger ones piggyback rides and assumed a clear matriarchal role.
?She was the boss,? said Christine Ortman, who has spent countless hours visiting the gorillas. ?We always called it Pattycake?s troop.?
Her afflictions ? the heart issues and worsening arthritis ? had slowed her. Zookeepers were advised to say goodbye to her last month, said Kate Brown, a longtime zoo volunteer, but Pattycake held on.
Zoo workers said that one gorilla, named Bweroni (workers called her Fran), had been crying and howling since Pattycake?s death.
According to the Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates the Bronx Zoo, Pattycake was the 31st oldest of the 338 gorillas kept in North American zoos. It said that the median life span for gorillas in zoos is 37.
Pattycake (her name had also been spelled Patty Cake, but it lost the space over the years) managed to give birth to 10 babies with four mates, including a pair of twins born in 1995. She raised only 1 of the 10 on her own; one died four days after birth. The others now reside in zoos around the country, including in Omaha, Buffalo, Detroit and Louisville. She had 10 half-siblings, their whereabouts unknown. She is also survived by at least one grandchild.
A necropsy attributed her death to heart disease. The zoo said she will probably be cremated later this week. No funeral service is planned.
Vivian Yee contributed reporting.
If you have remembrances or stories about Pattycake, please share them in the comments box below.
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: April 1, 2013
An earlier version of this post rendered incorrectly the name of the gorilla who died at the Bronx Zoo. Her name was Pattycake, not Patty Cake. Although her name was previously written many times as two words, the Wildlife Conservation Society says one word is correct.
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: April 2, 2013
An earlier version of a photo caption misstated the sex of Pattycake. The gorilla was a female.
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: April 2, 2013
An earlier version of a photo caption misstated the name of a hospital where Pattycake was treated for a broken arm. It was Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital, not Flower Fourth Avenue Hospital.
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: April 2, 2013
An earlier version of this post gave erroneous demographic information about gorillas. It is their median life span in zoos that is 37 years, not their median age.
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