I'm Worried About The Pandas' Mental Health

 My Google News Feed really dumped on me today. It was bad enough wading through the tragic events in Gaza, the barrage of intensifying bad behaviour among republicans in the House of Representatives, and another road closure in my neighbourhood, but did it have to tell me about how China is cruelly using their Pandas as a bargaining chip?  As always, no need to click over to the article because as I said so many years ago, when there is a Panda story, I am all over it. That is my vow to you.

As some of you may know, China refused to renew our Panda Lease on three Pandas we had here in the US (Tian Tian, Mei Xiang, and Xiao Qi Ji housed at the National Zoo, DC). They were bid a tearful farewell when their lease was up about a week and a half ago. Previous to that, Pandas living happily in San Diego and Memphis had their Panda Visas cancelled, too. The only remaining Pandas are in Atlanta, and their lease expires next year, at which time they're also headed back to China. 

Previously, Panda Leases were perfunctorily extended, but since diplomatic relations have gotten a little strained, the Chinese decided to Pull Their Pandas. President Xi didn't like that the US shot down his spy balloon; he didn't appreciate then-Speaker Pelosi's visit to Taiwan. Basically, Xi said, "Hey, just for that, we're taking back our Pandas!"

He's a tough guy, that Xi. He was, however, moved to find out that Americans, especially children, went to the zoo to say goodbye to the Pandas. That evidently softened him up a little. “Pandas have long been envoys of friendship between the Chinese and American peoples. We are ready to continue our cooperation with the United States on Panda conservation,” he said. Translation:  Make nice here if you want some Pandas, Mr. President.

This Panda Diplomacy has gone on since 1972 when Nixon made his historic visit to China. Since then, China has gifted nations with Pandas as a sign of friendship and good diplomatic relations. And when the nations displease them, China yanks those Pandas back. 

China also gets all the Pandas born to their Pandas in other nations. I feel bad for those little Pandas, raised in another country and shipped off to China. They don't know the language! Everyone looks different than what they're used to! It's a culture shock!

Maybe we should tell Xi Jinping thanks, but no thanks. It all sounds traumatic for the Pandas, young or old. Maybe China should just keep their Pandas to themselves.

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Z Is For Zoo

For years and years, our family had a membership to our zoo, the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. It's a wonderful zoo, and one which has terrific natural habitats like an African Savanna, Wolf Wilderness, RainForest, and Australian Outback. I rode the camels twice and always feed the lorikeets, loving how they land right on my shoulder or my hand as I walk carefully through the enclosure. I've been whistled at admiringly by the African grey parrots, and I've sweet-talked the red pandas out of their little wooden treehouse more than once. I love our zoo, and our family has gone there many, many times. The boys and I made good use of our membership in the summertime, taking guests, rejoicing at the birth of baby animals newly on display (especially awkward young giraffes), and learning not only about different species and biomes, but also about respecting the animals in their homes at the zoo.

After so many years, we started to feel like Zoo Insiders. We started skipping parts of the zoo that weren't that interesting to us. We scoffed at people who wondered aloud if our zoo had panda bears. Duh! We hated the people who read each and every exhibit sign aloud, unless they were reading it to very small children. It drove us crazy when parents let their kids bang on the glass of the animal enclosures when there were enormous signs everywhere that clearly said not to. But we reserved our deepest scorn for two types of people in particular.

The first type wears Inappropriate Zoo Footwear. The Cleveland Metroparks Zoo is a very walkable zoo, but it has lots of hills and winding paths. Despite this terrain, we would still find hundreds of people wearing flipflops, high wedge sandals, kitten heel pumps, and on one memorable visit, stiletto heels. And those Dr. Scholl's sandal thingies with only the strap across the toe and that terrible bump for your toes to cling to. We would see person after person sitting alongside paths or stopped on the hillside terrace, taking off footwear in order to rub his/her feet or remove grit. No sympathy.

The second type is the Pompous Sign Reader/Fake Pontificator. Every single zoo exhibit has an informational sign, sometimes two. And unfailingly, some mom or dad will read information from it as if he or she simply knows this information cold about this exotic animal, like it is so important to impress this kid. The boys and I saw this time and time again, and it was always hilarious and pathetic. But never more than the time in front of the sloth's cage. Because this mom, as she read the sign word for word, kept pronouncing it "slooth." As in "rhymes with tooth." On and on she pontificated, in a very fakey, hyper-engaging, "oh boy, is this ever fun and interesting" breathless voice, just about every line of the plaque's summary about the sloth. "Wow!" she said. "So that's the slooth! Whaddya think, kids? The two-toed slooth!" I thought I would die. (Actually, I probably did die, right there in Cleveland, for a little while, and then Jared and Sam scraped me up off the asphalt and pulled me over to look at koalas, or maybe even flamingos, which always revive me.)

**For the record, that word again is SLOTH. Only one O. I am still Not Over It.**

(Really, now. Does she pronounce the word BOTH as booth? Is an APRICOT an APRICOOT? I mean, how far does this disability extend? When she shops for chicken broth, does she think it's chicken BROOTH?)

I'M DONE NOW. MOVING ON.

And speaking of done, that ends the alphabet for me. Chat me up about your Zoo Thoughts, your own Z Words, or topics you'd like me to take up next.

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I Am Not An Animal! (And Judging By Their Press, I Am Damn Glad!)

From time to time, as many Alert Dept. Readers know, I like to keep you all abreast of Important Doings in the Animal World. (I also like to give my Shift Key a workout and employ Pretentious Eccentric Capitalization, but I digress.) Well, that time has come again, and with vigor. Two of my favourite animals are in the news, and circumstances being what they are--dire--I must bring these bulletins to you.
ITEM--In a shameless display of bullying, China, who holds almost 800 billion dollars of the United States' debt, has decided to flex a little of its leverage muscle and ask for its pandas back. Especially upsetting to patriotic panda lovers is the imminent return of Tai Shan, the cub resident at D.C.'s National Zoo in our nation's capital. Tai Shan, who was born at the zoo in 2005, will be shipped to China early next year, despite the fact that he is American born--a naturalized citizen of these United States! Plus, let's keep in mind that we're giving the Chinese not the old, hand-me-down pandas that they originally gave us! No. They are getting a brand, spanking new panda. How is this fair? I am also assuming that Tai Shan does not speak Chinese. He has been around American keepers his whole life, and I am also assuming that his parents, who have been in this country now for nine years, have entirely assimilated and are pretty much Americans, too. He is ill-equipped, at the tender age of four, to go off to what will be a foreign country and live among strangers. I am worried about his wellbeing and his happiness. You should be, too, if you are serious about pandas.
ITEM--More bad press about cows, and this time, it is all conjecture and forensic revisionist literary history bullshit. Thank goodness again for my Google News Alert feature, or I would never have been aware of this travesty. This inflammatory headline, of course, drew my ire right away, and I knew right then that I had to take the bull by the horns: WAS JANE AUSTEN KILLED BY COWS? "Of course not!" I shouted at my computer screen. Jane Austen is one of the most beloved of all Victorian novelists, and certainly in the sacred pantheon of woman writers. The last thing cows need is her death on their heads. They've already been saddled with global warming, and now this? The headline leads the casual news skimmer to assume that she was perhaps trampled or gored by rampaging bovines. One has to get past an entire lead paragraph and well into the second to finally read the far more tame and tepid crux of the theory: "Austen may have succumbed to tuberculosis contracted from cows." Oh, is that all? A glass of milk? Yawn. Listen, people, in this day and age we can die from eating spinach. Or drinking water. Lay off the cows, already. But, really, they still have it better than the camels. Read on.
ITEM--Listen, I am not a big fan of camels. I rode one once, and it was okay, but by and large, they don't do a thing for me. Still, no animal deserves this. Okay, maybe snakes. Or the dogs in my neighborhood who never shut the hell up. Or maybe certain republican radio show hosts. But not these poor camels. True, no one wants to be invaded by 6000 rampaging anything looking for a drink--that's for sure--but to round them up by helicopter and then pick them off and allow them to rot (read: die in agony if not killed, only wounded) sounds just terrible. First of all, these camels didn't ask to come to Australia; they were brought to the continent. Is it their fault that the experiment didn't go as planned? Why didn't the conservationists and wildlife experts there control the population before the feral herd topped a million? Why hasn't Camel Control been a priority? Besides, look at the photo of that camel opening a door by using the knob! That camel did that without being trained! Don't tell me that some of those camels don't have a future in the Entertainment Business! Why can't Australians look into Camel Exporting? I feel like there are any number of solutions that just haven't been explored here, the least of which might be: Camel: The Other White Meat.

I think you're all up to speed now with our friends in the Animal Kingdom. Remember, they share our planet. When it's all over, who do you think will come back first? Better be nice!

In Which, Concerned For The Wellbeing Of My International Readers, I Provide A Valuable Safety Bulletin--With Bears

I'm not sure how many readers of the Dept. are foreign nationals--although I do know many are from Texas--but this is a post that has merit, regardless. For those of you non-USA readers who find themselves in a hurry, I can distill its salient points immediately, in order of importance, and here they are:

1. Bears are dangerous.
2. Read CNN.com.

If you find yourselves at leisure and can continue, I can assure you it is well worth your while. (My United States residents, this blogpost can vindicate your obviously inherent knowledge and perhaps make you feel better about this.)

Onward.

It was with horror and trepidation that this article was brought to my attention by a helpful Dept. reader. As soon as I loaded up the page and saw Polar Bear Attacks Woman At Berlin Zoo, I had only one thought: Elinor, aka "Flocke," the German cutie that I became fascinated with last winter. I quickly scanned the article and saw that neither Elinor nor Knut, another polar bear PR bigwig in Germany, was involved in this Unfortunate Incident, which, by the way, is captured on videotape! Good heavens. (And still, no one knows why this woman leapt into the polar bear area--over a fence and into a moat, no less--during feeding time.)

That concern out of the way, I was free to concentrate on the Bigger Issue At Hand, and this it is: Why the hell are all these foreigners so hell-bent on mixing it up with these bears? We all recall the Panda Incident in which a guy wanted a hug, and Panda Incident2 in which a dad wanted to retrieve a toy from a panda enclosure, both of which occurred in China. Now this, in Germany.

What the heck?

And people say Americans are pushy and intrusive. At least we stay behind the fence and just stare at the animals. We don't go trying to get all interactive and whatnot with the bears. We simply stand there, read the information and then spout it off to our kids as if we already knew it: "Tiffany, look! That polar bear can live to be anywhere from 20 to 25 years old, did you know that? And unlike other bears, they don't hibernate. What? Okay, come on now. Yes, Tiffany, I see it's pooping. Come on, let's go get some cotton candy."

Anyway.

My point is this, International Readers, and although I have made it before, it is obvious that it bears repeating. (Oh, ha ha.) STOP IT WITH THE BEARS ALREADY AND START READING CNN.COM!

Geeze. Here's a link, even. Add it to your "Favorites."

The Wild Kingdom (And No, This Isn't About School)

Time once again for Dept. of Nance to alert you to News In The Animal Kingdom. Lest you should worry that I am becoming something of a One-Note on the subject of pandas, I have this time a virtual menagerie of creatures to discuss (although there is, in fact, a panda among them). So grab a handful of kibble or a nice fish or something, and let's dive in!

Many Dept. readers will recall this post I did earlier about the pelican who slammed into a swimmer's face off the coast of Florida. Well, perhaps it was not just a rogue bird after all! According to Jay Holcomb, executive director of the International Bird Resue Research Center in San Pedro, California, hundreds of pelicans have turned up wandering along roadways, crashing into boats and cars. "These birds are on the freeway getting run over," he said. Holy crap! This is happening in Oregon and California! Imagine the trail of death and destruction, I said to myself, that these birds left in their wake from Florida on their way West. But no: some experts think a marine neurotoxin in algae may be the cause; others, that the birds ingested some chemicals, used to fight Southern California's wildfires, now flushed into the ocean. Personally, I liked the image of Badass Pelicans On The Move from Florida to California, slamming into stuff as they move West.

Next, we have the admonition of biophysics researcher Gabor Horvath, who would like us to please, dim our lights before we totally screw everything up for everybody--and by "everybody," he means "animals in general." Artificial light from the world's cities is leading wildlife in wrong directions, and often straight to their deaths. Insects that lay eggs in ponds and lakes are confused by the tall glass-surfaced modern buildings and mistake these structures for bodies of water. Cute little baby sea turtles use the direction of moon and star light reflections off water to navigate to the ocean when they leave their nests on the beach. These babies make wrong turns and migrate toward the big city's downtown lights. So many metaphors spring to mind here, not to mention classic song lyrics: "How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm/After they've seen Paree?", for example. Imagine the poor sea turtle, trying to make it on his own in Vegas or New York City, when we all know how tough it is. Everyone there is a waiter/actor or a maid/singer. Come on! Traffic and rent alone are ball-busters.

Did someone ask for a Panda Story? But, of course! This time, it's Gu Gu, a panda at the Beijing Zoo who has tasted human flesh not once, not twice, but now for the third time! Apparently, a man and his son were playing catch with a stuffed panda near Gu Gu's enclosure, and the toy went over the five-foot fence. (Note to Zoo: five feet isn't much for a panda enclosure.) The good dad went into the pen when he thought the coast was clear, but Gu Gu went on the attack. The victim, Zhang Jiao, did not fight back because as he said, "The panda is a national treasure, and I love and respect [him], so I didn't fight back. The panda didn't let go until it chewed up my leg and its mouth was dripping with my blood." Wow. I hope all that was worth it for a stuffed panda toy, which is pretty much what old Zhang Jiao became at that point. What is it with these Chinese and these pandas? Don't they read CNN.com? Because this is the eleventeenth Panda Mauling Story I've read, and they've all been in China. OKAY.

Thank goodness the Animals are taking matters into Their Own Hands and are helping each other out. In Australia, sheepdogs are being used as protectors for a colony of endangered fairy penguins. These Maremma dogs were enlisted two years ago after the number of penguins in Warrnambool dwindled from 1000 down to 10 due to attacks by non-native predators. These dogs bonded with the flock of penguins, going so far as to lay down their lives to protect them. Does anyone else sense a Disney Movie Opportunity? Happy Feet meets Lady and the Tramp? I'm also wondering how a dog bonds with a penguin. Does it start walking funny? Does the dog slide around on its tummy or wear a tuxedo? And what's in it for the dog?

It's a jungle out there, Dept. readers. And remember, there are more of them than there are of us.

In Which I Ask The Age-Old Question: Who Is Dumber, Sarah Palin or a Japanese Zookeeper?

Sorry for the stretch between posts. Things got a little...busy at the other place. I think I've got things well in hand over there now, so I can breathe again and get back to running the joint here. Onward.

And I must also beg your indulgence while I bring up yet another story provided by our friends at CNN.com, again involving our neighbors of the Asian Persuasion. And animals.

Because goshdarnit, as I said last week, "when there's a good Animal VS. Human tale, I'm all over it. That's my vow to you." And this one is especially dear to me because, as an American Public School Teacher, I'm really freaking tired of hearing just how goddam smart everyone else in the world is compared to us. How our schools are producing a nation of drooling, pantspooping idiots who are too stupid to know that "Africa" is not a country, but a continent. What? Sarah Palin thought that Africa was a country? Well...she is a pantspooping idiot. But I digress.

The story is this one, and the headline reads "Zoo Solves Mystery of Celibate Polar Bears." The dateline is Tokyo, Japan. Now we all know how smart the Japanese are. They can make an entire computer so small that it can fit onto the butt of a gnat. They have a rail system that runs entirely on human waste. They don't even use money over there anymore, just debit cards. (All of that is true. I got it from Wikipedia.) Anyway.
(the polar bear in question--look how dirty it is!)
It seems that three years ago, a zoo procured a polar bear cub, named it Tsuyoshi after a famous baseball player, raised it, and then in June, introduced it to its 11-year old resident female bear Kurumi and waited for a romance to develop. But, much to everyone's disappointment, nothing ever happened. Tsuyoshi never made any amorous advances at all, aggressive or otherwise, towards Kurumi. Finally, the zookeepers decided to find out if there was anything amiss.

"Earlier this month, zookeepers put Tsuyoshi under anesthesia to get to the bottom of the matter. That's when they made their discovery: Tsuyoshi is a female."

So! Let's review:
1. Japanese=way smarter than Americans, but
2. they raised this bear for three years
3. they thought the bear was male for three years plus
4. they had to anesthetize it to find out is was a female only after it would not mate with a female
5. they had the bear for three years when it was a baby (this, I think, bears repeating)

Yet, it gets better.

Tsuyoshi's "brother," who was adopted by another zoo, has also turned out to be female, Japan's Kyodo news agency reported.

Now! Let's recap:

1. Chinese college student breaks into panda enclosure because he wants a hug
2. Japanese zookeepers cannot tell the sex of polar bear they have raised for three years

Gosh, I feel smart!

Stupid Human Tricks, The Chinese Version

You know, it's nice when it's not Americans making headlines for doing stupid things, for a change.

I'm talking about this story, but really, there's no need to go there. I'll be quoting from it extensively here because A) it's about pandas, and B) there's just so much great stuff in it that I can't resist it. It's right up there with the Pelican Story. And you know me--when there's a good Animal VS. Human tale, I'm all over it. That's my vow to you.

First of all, thank you CNN.com for this stellar headline: Panda Bites Student Seeking A Hug. There is no freaking way I'm not reading this story. Half of me is hoping that it's not a real panda, but some minimum wage-earner dressed in a fake fur suit doing on-site promo work for a Chinese restaurant who is being mauled by some drunken college frat boy on a bender. Okay.

But no. "A college student in southern China was bitten by a panda after he broke into the bear's enclosure hoping to get a hug," says CNN.com's source. Further, "the student scaled the fence surrounding the panda, named Yang Yang," a park employee said. How many of you--right now--are saying "Why isn't this kid in class or in his dorm room studying? What was he doing at a zoo?"

"Yang Yang was so cute and I just wanted to cuddle him. I didn't expect he would attack," the 20-year-old student, surnamed Liu, said. And this kid is in college? What is he majoring in, underwater basketweaving? The history of Hello Kitty? What the hell kind of logic is that? Is this kid from Oz? His parents better do him a big favor and keep him away from the pretty, pretty kitty-cats with the fluffy heads. Or the big, brown teddy bears!

And now, to the question that we all have been asking all along and that, if this were an American newsreport, would have already been cleared up: "The student was pale as he was taken away by medics but appeared clear-headed," a park employee said. Which is the Chinese equivalent of the American "alcohol did not appear to be a factor."

To which I reply, then what the hell is his excuse?

But here's one of my favorite parts: "Yang Yang, who was flown to Guilin last year from Sichuan province, was behaving normally on Saturday and did not seem to suffer any negative psychological effects, the park employee said." I'm telling you--the Chinese are all about their pandas! Remember, there are 1.3 billion Chinese, but only between 700-1000 pandas. Which do you think is more important, some idiotic 20-year old who thinks he can hug a freaking wild animal or a precious endangered symbol of an entire country and valuable link of an ecosystem already threatened by earthquakes, climate change, and habitat encroachment? Duh.

Finally, I love the common sense of the Chinese. No constant threat of litigation there. Witness the testimony of the park employee when asked if they would be adding yet more signage warning people not to climb in and try to hug the pandas: "We cannot make it like a prison. We already have signs up warning people not to climb in," he said. "There are no fences along roads but people know not to cross if there are cars. This is basic knowledge."

Well, maybe for most Chinese. For Americans...we still put warnings on our sleep aids that they "may cause drowsiness." Sigh.