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."