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[Josh Greenman <joshg1973 AT yahoo.com>]

http://www.dailynews.com/cda/article/print/ 
0,1674,200%257E20954%257E2104641,00.html

No monkey business

Minyak finds healing tough at L.A. Zoo

By Dana Bartholomew
Staff Writer

Friday, April 23, 2004 - Minyak wheezed, dangled his orangutan arms and  
gazed down at Kalim, a nubile female half his size.

 "Here she comes -- he's looking at her," exclaimed Jennie McNary,  
curator of mammals at the Los Angeles Zoo as the female ape scampered  
across a recreation room and pursed her pouty lips. "This is always  
exciting.

 "What do you think, Kalim? He's a pretty handsome dude."

 For the zoo's newest orangutan, Minyak's budding courtship is nothing  
short of a medical and technical marvel.

 Two years ago, the purebred Borneo ape was holed up in a muggy  
cement-floor research facility in Atlanta with a chest full of  
bronchial trouble and no friends.

 He was sullen, depressed. Because of his failing health, no other zoo  
would take him.

 "He looked pitiful," said Dr. Leah Greer, a Los Angeles Zoo  
veterinarian from Sherman Oaks. "He was thin, underweight. He had  
boogers coming out of his nose, boogers coming out of his air sac. ...  
It was sad."

 In other words, the 22-year-old orangutan looked more like a wimpy,  
snot-nosed kid than a hunky, amorous ape.

 McNary persuaded the zoo to take him in. Los Angeles was dry and  
sunny, a perfect antidote for Minyak's chronic pneumonia and severe  
case of airsacculitis -- or infection in the pouch at the base of the  
neck that allows great apes to bellow across the treetops.

 The zoo also needed a pure Borneo orangutan to mate with its three  
Bornean orangutans.

 All went well until the first winter rains when Minyak -- too wheezy  
and sick for the public eye -- took a turn for the worse. He was  
phlegmatic. He wouldn't eat.

 The zoo would have to remove his air sac -- an all-day surgical  
procedure never performed on a fully mature ape.

 "I said, I'm just a veterinarian, I can't do this crazy surgery," said  
Greer, a young doc with a cheerleader smile and a penchant for calling  
her patient "Big Boy" or "Pumpkindoodles."

 But operate she did, aided by a fellow veterinarian and a team of four  
human medical doctors at the zoo's new $13.4 million Animal Health and  
Conservation Center.

 Sans his air sac, the 365-pound orangutan still had pneumonia and  
scarred lung tissue that made it hard to breathe in the dust kicked up  
by massive zoo construction.

 Greer worried that one more surgery to remove part of his lungs could  
kill the endangered orangutan.

 Enter IQAir Inc., a Swiss company that for 40 years has built  
high-powered air-cleaning systems for homes and hospitals.

 As wildfires raged across Southern California last fall, the company  
offered to donate air-cleaning systems to evacuee centers -- as well as  
local zoos.

 When IQAir officials heard about Minyak, they offered to purify his  
bedroom so he could once again breathe easy. Last February, they  
installed what they say is the world's first air purifier designed for  
animals -- for "boy-in-the-bubble" nighttime relief.

 "When I saw how passionate and dedicated those (zoo) people were --  
that they would take Minyak when nobody would -- it stole my heart,"  
said Kirk Sullivan, spokesman for IQAir North America, Inc., based in  
Santa Fe Springs.

 After one hour with the new system, he said, Minyak's room was as  
fresh as "Swiss mountain air." It has helped him breathe by night --  
and by day.

 As zookeepers this week readied a banquet of squash, lettuce, onions  
and carrots for the Red Ape Rain Forest, they saw hope for the addled  
orangutan with the slight asthmatic wheeze who might one day be ready  
to meet the public.

 While Kalim flirts, Minyak basks in the sunshine and watches with  
lowered eyes.

 "He's obviously very interested," said McNary, a 24-year veteran of  
the L.A. Zoo. "It's just remarkable his health is good enough. I am  
thrilled.

 "He's doing much better than we ever thought he would."