By Linda Wheeler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 22, 1994; Page B01

Wanted: One warm, fuzzy, female giant panda for companionship and maybe more. I am an older gentleman, a widower with a comfortable home, an unlimited supply of bamboo and an adoring public.

The National Zoo is still hoping that a mate can be found for Hsing-Hsing, the only panda living in the United States. When Ling-Ling, his companion of 20 years, died in 1992, half of the zoo's most popular attraction was left to his solitary meals and lonely naps.

Yesterday, Hsing-Hsing, 23, ate his usual public lunch of dozens of young bamboo trees as a delighted audience of children and adults recorded his every chomp on dozens of cameras.

They were joined by panda experts from China, the American Zoo and Aquarium Association and the National Zoo, who had just filled the media in on the first year of a $30 million joint program to save the panda.

As part of the effort to preserve the remaining 1,000 pandas and their natural habitat in the mountains of China, they hope to bring pandas to U.S. zoos for breeding. For the moment, however, it is illegal to import endangered species into this country.

If a mate could be found for Hsing-Hsing, there remains the delicate question of his interest and ability to fulfill the long-term wish of his fans and keepers for a panda cub. In the past, he seemed a reluctant suitor to Ling-Ling. She did, however, have five cubs, all of which died within a few days of birth.

Is he too old?

"Well, he is elderly," said Devra Kleiman, the zoo's resident expert on pandas. "But last time we checked his semen, he was okay."

Hsing-Hsing is looking a bit shaggy these days, but that is because elderly animals don't tend to groom themselves well. "For a panda his age, he is really in good shape," she said.

Is he lonely?

"I won't presume to say anything about that," she said. "Being solitary is not unusual for a panda."

But Tyrone Lee, an attendant at the zoo's parking lot, said he knows.

"Of course he's lonely. I mean, how would you feel if all of a sudden all the men disppeared from your world?" Lee asked a female reporter. "Yeah, he's lonely all right. He needs a mate."