posted May 19, 2004 01:18 PM         

Kubi, the proud and well-loved patriarch of the San Francisco Zoo's Gorilla World exhibit, died Tuesday afternoon, 11 days after undergoing unprecedented surgery by a team of UCSF doctors who removed his diseased right lung and attracted worldwide attention in the process.

"It didn't work," said Dr. Freeland Dunker, the zoo's head veterinarian, soon after Kubi died. "But it gave people the imagination to try."

The 29-year-old silverback Western lowland gorilla, who had suffered from chronic bronchitis and recurring pneumonia before his May 7 surgery, died at 3: 30 p.m.

Tuesday night, after a necropsy was performed, Dunker said an abscess had developed behind his stitches and sutures, separating them and causing massive internal bleeding.

"He wouldn't eat any solid foods this morning," said Mary Kerr, his keeper of 26 years, on Tuesday evening. "But he was drinking bottles of lemonade with a certain gusto. He was active."

In midafternoon, hoping to coax Kubi's appetite back to life, she went to a zoo cafe to get a half-gallon of milk to make oatmeal for him. When she returned 10 minutes later, he was lying motionless on his back, not breathing.

Kerr said Gorilla World's four females were lined up, staring through the mesh that separated their outdoor cage from their lone male companion, sequestered indoors.

Kerr added that Bwang, Kubi's mate of 22 years, was tossing pieces of food in his direction, trying to make him move.

Although Kerr made sure that none of the females saw Kubi's body being removed for his necropsy, they kept smelling the cage afterward and staring at the spot where he had died.

Kubi's 5-year-old daughter, Nneka, repeatedly vocalized her distress, while older females Zura and Pogo tried to comfort her.

"She has lost her father," Kerr said. "Kubi lost his own mother when he was 3. It's very traumatic. They're like humans in that respect."

The average life span of silverbacks is 35 years. Kubi had faced a 30 percent chance of succumbing during his operation and a 50 percent chance of dying within the next 30 days.

Everyone knew those odds -- but it was easy to forget them, watching the 422-pound gorilla rebound so quickly, happily gobbling up carrots and green beans and voicing amorous overtures to Bwang.

"He was doing very well over the last couple of days," Kerr said. "It's quite a shock. Our expectations had gotten pretty high."

Kubi, whose full name was Mkubwa -- Swahili for big and strong -- was an exceptionally gentle father to Nneka and his two sons, 15-year-old Shango and 10-year-old Barney, who both live elsewhere in the zoo.

And after more than two decades of life with Bwang, he was just as smitten as when they'd first met.

Although Kubi was born in the San Francisco Zoo on May 1, 1975, his parents, Bwana and Jackie, both came from the wild. Kubi's older sister is Koko, the famous Woodside "talking gorilla" adept at sign language.

Kubi's surgery was a ground-breaking daylong procedure, with the operation itself lasting 3 hours and 45 minutes. Until Friday, he was kept on 24-hour watch by a monitor 25 feet away, with keepers taking turns doing all- nighters and zoo vet Jacqueline Jencek putting in 36 hours straight.

On Friday, when it was time to deprogram the internal pump diffusing antibiotics into Kubi's body, it was Jencek who devised an unusual approach.

"She made up a little nest in the adjacent enclosure, and she put on sunglasses and laid down," said zoo spokeswoman Nancy Chan. "Kubi laid down next to her. He was very trusting. She was able to wave a little wand and deprogram it."

The sunglasses were a way to avoid eye-to-eye contact with the gorilla, who was smart enough to realize that the sight of a vet usually meant something unpleasant was about to happen.

The most engaging of apes, Kubi easily inspired this kind of devotion and ingenuity.

UCSF anesthesiologist Lundy Campbell and thoracic surgeons Chuck Hoopes and David Jablons were dropping by for lengthy visits with their hirsute patient, sometimes up to two hours, for days after his operation -- the first time ever that a gorilla has received chest surgery.

"We were all very surprised he died," Campbell said Tuesday night. "I generally visit all my patients after surgery to make sure they're doing all right. I felt no different about Kubi. I had really high hopes because he was doing so well."

And Tuesday afternoon, as the dispiriting news of the gorilla's sudden death began to spread, Kubi's first keeper came by to pay her respects.

"It hit me like a ton of bricks," said Carol Martinez, now retired. "It's a very heavy sadness. I knew him since he was born. I especially remember him full of more vim and vigor than you can imagine."

As Kubi's lifeless body, trussed-up in a hoist in the zoo hospital, was undergoing the necropsy -- his final medical intrusion -- zoo workers showed up for comfort and commiseration.

"This is losing a family member," Chan said.

The zoo had planned to allow Kubi to return to the outdoor part of his exhibit Friday. Instead, he will be cremated, with his feet, hands, skull and at least one leg preserved for educational purposes.