Tai Shan, the National Zoo’s main attraction for the last four years and its only surviving giant panda cub, will be taken to China sometime in early 2010, Zoo officials said today. News that the Zoo’s lease on the young panda would not be renewed first broke early this morning.

Permits to transport Tai Shan to his new home at the Wolong’s Beifengxia Base, in Ya’an, Sichuan, have already been submitted, and the panda is expected to depart D.C. sometime at the end of January or early February, according to Zoo spokesperson Karin Korpowski-Gallo. So you still have a couple of months, just barely, to get your fix.

Tai Shan was born at the National Zoo on July 9, 2005, weighing only a few ounces. Due to his tiny size, initial media reports referred to the baby cub as “the size of a stick of butter,” leading former DCist Music Editor Catherine Andrews and DCist Tech Director Tom Lee to dub the little furball, ‘Butterstick.’ The name rapidly caught on, though the Zoo eventually asked the public to vote on an “official name,” which ended up being Tai Shan. Despite his having grown up since then, he’ll always be Butterstick in our hearts.