Photo by Dan Dan The Binary Man.

Obviously, no one around the city wants to jinx the possibility that the National Zoo’s female giant panda, Mei Xiang, might be pregnant. (In fact, I just knocked on wood after typing that sentence.) But Patricia Sullivan has produced a fine cultural document of our panda paranoia: in the first paragraph of this piece on the preparations the Zoo is making for a possible Butterstick II, Sullivan uses an italicized if three times. Why Sullivan’s copy editors decided to tempt the panda gods by not italicizing all of the several other “if”s in the report is lost on this superstitious word-wielder.

Mei was successfully inseminated back in January. Panda gestation lasts anywhere from 90 to 185 days and Mei Xiang’s hormone levels were higher than normal earlier this month — so if Mei Xiang is preggers, we should know relatively soon.