ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 18, 1996 TAG: 9601180016
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Beth Macy
SOURCE: BETH MACY
There was the temperature-controlled incubator, on loan from the premature-baby unit of Community Hospital.
There was the mixing of formula and the every-other-hour feedings, done by hand with a tiny syringe.
There was the immediate bonding - first with the zookeepers, then with a stuffed monkey named Morilla and finally with his natural-born family of golden lion tamarinds.
Ask animal care supervisor Beth Hartsel to describe the temperament of Kong - Mill Mountain Zoo's first hand-raised tamarind monkey - and you hear a typical mother's take on her son: one part pride, one part hope and 10 parts exasperation.
``He is very fussy when he wants something,'' Hartsel says. ``Very loud.''
But make no mistake. Among the 133 animals that live at the mountaintop zoo, Kong is clearly the keepers' pet.
You'd be the favorite, too, if you'd had such an underdog infancy.
Kong was born July 29, one of three babies so small and so orange that the keepers could barely see him clinging to his mother to nurse. Less than two days later, he became weak and fell to the ground.
Chances for his survival were less than 50-50. And chances that the National Zoo's Species Survival Plan officials would approve Mill Mountain's request to hand-raise Kong were even slimmer.
``We were so excited about the birth, we just started making phone calls,'' Hartsel recalls. ``We're so small that it's almost by fluke that we were granted permission to try it,'' says Amy Chattin, the zoo's education curator.
Because tamarinds are on the endangered-species list, their breeding is carefully controlled, meticulously documented. Kong's every feeding and bowel movement had to be recorded in his file.
For three months, Hartsel and three other keepers gave Kong around-the-clock attention. They took turns taking him home with them at night - so that every two hours they could feed him his special blend of baby formula and puppy-milk replacer. (Special recipes were sent by fax from the Los Angeles Zoo.)
``They had to set their alarm clocks every night,'' Chattin says. ``Some of them worried so much they ran in to check on him every time they heard a peep.''
During the day, volunteers and other workers helped keep watch. Around the three-month mark, Kong was weaned onto soft foods, and the keepers began the slow process of re-introducing him to his natural family.
First they put him in a small carrying case and held him outside his family's cage so he could see and sniff and be seen and sniffed. Then they put him inside the family cage, though he was still separated in a smaller cage of his own, called a ``howdy cage.''
A few days later, the howdy cage was opened so he could jump around with his family for a few hours at a time, then eventually all day. The final decision to let him spend the night in the family's nest was made after Hartsel witnessed this:
``We saw the mother grab him along with her other babies and put him in the nest box. And we were like. . . `YES!' ''
Before long, Kong's mother began grooming him, and his siblings taught him to jump and swing.
``He's turned into a tamarind now, as opposed to an infant,'' Chattin says, though he's still considered to be ``imprinted,'' meaning he has an unnatural attraction to humans.
To prove he remembers his first family of keepers, Kong is usually the first out of the cage when Hartsel arrives with the family's dinner of mealworms and monkey biscuits.
``He knows Beth Hartsel,'' Chattin says. ``He recognizes them all,'' including keepers Shari Payne, David Jobe and Theresa Hill.
Hill, incidentally, recently became pregnant with her first child after experiencing the joys of midnight feedings, tamarind-style.
``I think raising him rubbed off on her,'' Hartsel says. ``But it's gonna take more than a tamarind for me.''
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Don Petersen. Zookeepers hand-fed Kong for three months.by CNBcolor.