A Tear For Kiki: `He Was A Better Being Than Many Humans'

A sense of shock and grief still permeates the Woodland Park Zoo following the unexpected death of Kiki, the immense, gentle leader of the Zoo's family of lowland gorillas.

The gorillas themselves are still shaken, "off their feed," as it were. One of the youngsters, an 8-year-old male, Luri, sat for several days crying outside the door where Kiki customarily appeared, on his way to the naturalistic habitat that is the gorillas' home.

For 10 of his 24 years, Kiki lived behind bars at Woodland Park. But 12 years ago, in a dramatic design concept originally conceived by David Hancocks, later director of the zoo, Kiki and his group were able to roam virtually free.

Violet Sunde is the gorilla keeper. She had been with Kiki 22 years (he was captured in the wild at the age of 2). Even now, Violet can scarcely talk about Kiki without tears coming.

She was reading a descriptive paper put together by Lani Leary Houck, who is a psychotherapist and hospital chaplain under contract to the city.

"I like this one," Violet said, pointing to the paper. "It says, `Kiki was the Gandhi of gorillas.' Yes, that is true."

Violet's cramped little headquarters, adjacent to the gorillas' sleeping area, is awash with cards, letters, bouquets of flowers, and her phone rings incessantly with sympathetic calls.

Kiki was, indeed, the Gandhi of gorillas, noted for his sensitivity and gentleness. He weighed 450 pounds when he died. He

was the leader, the dominant gorilla. He would break up little fights, he would protect the small ones and he would, on occasion, even try to protect humans.

Perhaps a dozen people were watching through the thick viewers' glass when Kiki suddenly fell over. He was chewing on a piece of bamboo. A volunteer observer began to run for help just as Lois Baker, a security guard, came over a rise in the gorillas' habitat.

"He tried to get up once," Baker said. "He raised one leg, then fell back and was quiet. Then I shooed everybody out - I'm afraid I wasn't very nice about it. Then I locked all the gates."

Nina, the 23-year-old female gorilla, came to Kiki. She sat by his side with her hand on his huge body. She would not take her hand away from him. Pete, a silverback gorilla, age 23, began poking Kiki gently with a stick, trying to arouse him.

By now they were all there - perhaps a dozen zookeepers and volunteer observers. Someone put a white rose in his huge hand. The other gorillas were coaxed back into their night cages.

People cried, unashamedly, and there developed, on the spot, a kind of wake.

Each of the people spoke about Kiki. About his "majestic" presence, about his delicate eating style, "eating blueberries, one by one." One told about Kiki's "deep belly laugh," and how he would walk away, as though with contempt, from a fight.

He would play hide-and-seek with people. He had that look, "one which communicated everything," and he had "this childlike ability to recognize caretakers in or out of uniform." "He was a better being than many humans," somebody said.

Toward the end of this wake, or whatever you call it, the psychotherapist-chaplain, Lani Leary Houck, asked if she might say a prayer. Nobody objected. After the prayer, she asked everybody to put their hands on Kiki's body.

It was all so unexpected. Kiki's death is still a mystery, although not all the pathology reports are in.

Quite a while later, Houck would write down her impressions of the afternoon, some of which she gave me.

"What's the story really about?" she asked, in one passage. "It's about how an animal can change many people's lives. The community as family, understanding through common experience, without language. The experience of being connected and involved in each others' lives, of mattering, of influence, of empowering through one's presence. The Gandhi of gorillas."

A short fax arrived, too, from the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. It was sent by Hancocks:

"In some way I feel that I have lost a close and understanding friend, someone with whom I shared something very special, including difficult times that we had to win through, and successes shared.

"His death is a great loss to all of us, and when someone as tender and noble and smart and as good as Kiki dies, I think we can say the planet has lost something special - just as we all gained something from our contact with him."

Emmett Watson's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday in the Northwest section of The Times.