0.2 The funeral of bobo  (Page 8/12)

Bobo soon grew to unmanageable proportions, though, and the Lowmans sold him to Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo in 1953. There, he proved to be a showstopper—so much so that the zoo was able to mount a prodigious fund-raising campaign centered on Bobo’s charisma, raising enough money to build a new house for its primates.

Bobo, wrote “Citizen of Invisible Seattle” David Humphries in the Weekly early in 1981, was Seattle’s “unrivaled star celebrity in residence…. Surrounded by an indefinable aura of joy, he was loved by all who knew him…. Bobo was the biggest attraction the Woodland Park Zoo ever had. But he was much more than that. He was a community asset, a hero to children, a mascot. His widely publicized zoo antics so delighted Seattleites that a citywide cult of Bobo imitators developed…. Before the Space Needle went up or the Pike Place Market was redeveloped, before the Sonics or the Seahawks, Bobo was Seattle, and Seattle was infected with a mad passion, Bobomania.”

People traveled from all over the Northwest to see Bobo, and he outperformed even Ivar Haglund in Seattle newspapers and on television. Seattle Times reporter Tom Robbins, in a typical 1962 accolade, wrote that Bobo put to shame human Seattle’s promotional efforts. “It has taken millions of dollars and seven years of hard work to fill the World’s Fair grounds with visitors,” Robbins wrote. “There is a big fellow in North Seattle who, with no help and no money, could empty those grounds in less than 10 minutes…. It is understandable that a chap that can bend iron bars and stretch truck tires as if they were rubber bands might be unimpressed by the accomplishments of puny humans. While we race like schizophrenic squirrels in a revolving cage filled with status symbols, time clocks, tax forms, and parking meters, he relaxes in uncluttered, air-conditioned comfort and reigns in quiet majesty as king of Woodland Park Zoo. His name is Bobo.”

Humphries came closer than anyone to elucidating Bobo’s mysterious charm. “Maybe it was Bobo’s Pepsodent playboy smile,” he wrote, “or it could have been his eyes; most male gorillas have a mean, malevolent look in their yellowish, bloodshot eyes, but Bobo’s were Marie Osmond white. Whatever the reason, most everyone agreed: Bobo was a looker.”

His looks, unfortunately, were something of a false advertisement. In 1956, the zoo imported a female companion, named Fifi, in the hopes that Bobo would produce more marquee idols that would further burnish the zoo’s image and heighten its popularity and fund-raising capacity. But Bobo refused to have anything to do with Fifi, who would grace his cage and futilely pursue him to the day he died. Bobo spurned Fifi’s often frantic sexual advances by throwing her off, screaming, threatening her, and sometimes beating her up.

The entire city followed the travails of Bobo and Fifi as if they were the last surviving members of the Royal Family. Seattle newspapers and television stations chronicled every twist and turn in the sexual saga. Interpretations abounded. Everyone had a theory about Bobo’s obstinate celibacy—the prevailing belief being that Fifi lacked looks, grace, and charm—and a veritable cottage industry of pop primate psychology took root in 1960s Seattle. Bobo’s zookeepers tried various stratagems in their increasingly imaginative attempts to stimulate the big lug’s libido: They placed infant gorillas outside his cage at one point, in the hopes that Bobo would feel sexually inspired by paternal stirrings, and they rigged up a television monitor in his cage, through which they broadcast romantic scenes from classic movies. But Bobo remained unmoved, and died heirless.