June 9, 1966: George was a happy little gorilla. He was acquired by the Pittsburgh Zoo in 1965, and was given a mate. What more could a 4-year-old gorilla want? But soon the mate died of a heart ailment. George became sad. His picture was in the newspaper. Readers saw a small, melancholic gorilla peering through the bars of a cage.
People started calling him “Lonesome George.”
It was simply too much for a woman named Mrs. John W. Soars (that’s how the newspapers identified her, with no first name). Lonesome George, she decided, must have a mate. Mrs. Soars proposed a trading stamp campaign to provide a wife for the forlorn gorilla. The idea was picked up by The Pittsburgh Press, and before long Pittsburghers had donated $6,500 worth of trading stamps to the cause.
If there’s one thing folks in this city won’t abide, it’s a sad, lonely gorilla.
This is where Ginger enters our story. She’d been snatched from her home in Gabon, West Africa, and stuck in a zoo in Copenhagen, Denmark. While there, Ginger was selected to be George’s mate. So she was stuffed into a crate, flown to Pittsburgh and introduced to Lonesome George.
“It was love at first sight,” blared The Pittsburgh Press. Ginger was a “dark-eyed beauty” with “cosmopolitan sophistication.” In addition, the newspaper reminded readers, she’d lived in Europe.
Lonesome George was a bit overwhelmed. He wasn’t sure whether he should embrace his new bride or stomp around in a jealous rage. He decided to try both tactics. Ginger played it cool. She continued to entice George to her side with “loving glances and snorts.”
No male can resist a snorting female. In a fit of excitement, George swung around in his cage and pounded his chest.
Then Ginger got down to business. Her first task? Checking the cleanliness of her new digs. “She wiped her finger across the floor of the cage and studied it carefully, causing a zoo official to get a mop and clean up,” The Press reported.
The two gorillas soon became a major draw — the most popular gorillas in the United States, declared local newspapers. Record crowds came to the zoo to see the pair.
Of course, love stories such as this always end in tragedy. The bad news came after less than a month of bliss. Lonesome George was found dead in his cage on June 26. An autopsy revealed the cause of death — intestinal problems. But that wasn’t the big news. The autopsy unearthed something shocking: Lonesome George was a female.
“Oops!” read the headline in the next day’s Pittsburgh Press.
Officials at the zoo explained that it was difficult to determine the sex of young gorillas. Remember, this was in the mid 1960s.
Ginger took the news in stride. She didn’t need a mate.
“Most gorillas are affectionate and want to be cuddled and loved,” said zoo superintendent Howard Hays. “But Ginger is content to be alone.”
Some time later, Pittsburghers were given more shocking news: Ginger, it turned out, was a male.
Oops, again. Ginger was renamed George.
George settled into life at the zoo. He often held his caretaker’s hand or stuck his feet out of the the cage to be tickled. He played tug-of-war with visitors using a rubber hose and splashed around in water when his cage was hosed out. For 12 years, George was a star attraction. Then, in 1979, George died of complications from an infected tooth.
He’s with us to this day, at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. We’ve seen him there, stuffed and incredibly life-like. He’s got this mischievous look in his eye, as if he’d played some kind of grand joke on us all and we still don’t get it.
