Fans say goodbye to Nikita, the Kansas City Zoo’s polar bear

The familiar rollicking, tumbling Nikita that everyone loves was late. Overslept, perhaps.

Then a child’s voice sounding over the nostalgic fans crowded into the Kansas City Zoo’s polar bear exhibit room Saturday announced his arrival at his going-away party.

“There he is!” she squealed.

All 1,200 pounds of him emerged on the solid ground just beyond his water pool, regal and white in the sun.

He raised up on his haunches, stretched, nose high, his neck seeming to grow.

The zoo’s rock star, as docent Ann Pisani called him, was back in business.

Into the water he went, seen through the giant windows, astonishingly buoyant as he came bubble-blowing face to face with his tiny human visitors watching from inside.

It’s hard to imagine a zoo trip without him, said Renee Sykes, 53, of Blue Springs.

Over the past five years when Sykes brought nieces and nephews or children from her church, Nikita’s home was the first and last stop almost every time.

“They’d run to see him first,” she said. “Then we’d have to see him again before we left.”

The going-away party Saturday was actually the first of a few departure events, so there will still be time to see the popular bear before he actually ships out soon after Jan. 3.

Nine-year-old Nikita is headed for the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, where a 15-year-old female bear named Anana is waiting — hopefully with cubs in their future.

Nikita might have some inkling, as much as a bear could, that he’s being treated especially like a star — some of which might have resulted in his slow start Saturday.

For extra fun, his keepers gathered all of his thick toys and put them out for him sealed in big cardboard boxes — toys laced with some of that lard he loves, said one of his keepers, Bridget Cronin.

Before his fans were to arrive, he’d torn out all the toys and licked them clean and was on his stomach, basking far back in his enclosure well past the 10 a.m. start time announced in party invitations.

“I’ve never seen him like that before,” Sykes said. “He must be sad he’s leaving us.”

He came in August 2010, living up to his role as the prince of the Kansas City Zoo’s renaissance. It was hot, Pisani remembered. Records show the high temperature that day hit 99 degrees, and the crowd was lined up in the heat, with zoo staff shading people has much as possible with umbrellas.

He loved crowds, Cronin said. Visitors quickly caught on to one of his routines, repeating a course in and out of the water, back-flipping and hitting the same spot on the windows with his giant black-padded paws.

A favorite picture for many families was capturing their child standing with a tiny hand on the window, right where they knew Nikita’s giant paw would land.

Saturday he played again, often with special treats or toys tossed his way from keepers safely atop his enclosure.

“We’re going to miss him,” visitor Megan Martinez, 50, of Kansas City, said with 11-year-old daughter Ava.

Ava will remember “how he pushes on the glass,” she said, “and his flips.”

Ava joined in on some of the zoo overnight events, camping inside the exhibit room, and watched him play into the night.

The visitors, staff and zoo volunteers such as Joel Kallem understood the importance of the mission taking Nikita away.

Polar Bears International is helping lead intense efforts to preserve the bears, whose survival is increasingly threatened by shrinking ice caps, Kallem said.

There are only about 60 polar bears in zoos under the Association of Zoos and Aquariums in the U.S., and federal regulations prohibit the importation of bears. Breeding within zoos is critical.

So Kallem isn’t alone when he says his parting wish for Nikita is “lots of babies.”

The Kansas City Zoo will still have its female polar bear, Berlin, whom many visitors probably haven’t seen but will likely see more of once Nikita is gone.

Berlin, 26, came in 2013 and is now beyond promising breeding years. She and Nikita did not have any cubs. Polar bears in captivity live into their mid-30s, so there is always a chance Nikita could return someday, or an offspring.

His actual departure date is not set, said Andrea O’Daniels, the zoo’s animal supervisor. The zoo will be celebrating New Year’s with Nikita, and staff members are planning to treat him in the new year with his favorite special fun — a 3-ton pile of ice.

He’ll leave Kansas City in a giant, steel-mesh crate, awake, with a keeper and veterinarian accompanying him, O’Daniels said.

He’ll go with what O’Daniels lovingly called “his big personality,” “always on his terms.”

Get ready, North Carolina.

This story was originally published December 19, 2015 at 5:18 PM.