Photo by mosley.brian.We got pretty excited when we came across this Washington Post story, in which National Zoo Director Dennis Kelly outlines how the Zoo is attempting to ensure that pandas remain a fixture in Washington:
[Kelly] said there was a “very low probability” that China could take the zoo’s pandas back and leave Washington without any of the popular animals.
“Our program has been so successful,” he said. “And they’re so iconic. And quite frankly, they’re a bridge between our two peoples.”
Damn right! Cuddly pandas solve all the world’s problems.
But just like the federal government, there’s a lot of sausage-making behind the scenes of the panda trade. According to Kelly, the options on the table are basically as follows:
- If the Zoo gets approval from the Chinese on a new lease, it could simply keep both Mei Xiang and Tian Tian for another five years and roll the dice that the duo hasn’t lost all productivity.
- Or, the zoo could trade Mei Xiang and Tian Tian for another pair of pandas.
Now, replace all instances of “Mei Xiang,” “Tian Tian” and “panda” in those two options with “a 1994 Chevy pickup,” “a beat-up Toyota” and “vehicles,” and one gets the uncomfortable sense that we’re going to be asking a man with a bad combover and a mustard yellow suit for an extension on our beloved bamboo-eaters. Whatever the Zoo decides, it seems like Kelly’s the right man to shakedown the panda overlords: he successfully negotiated a panda lease — at half the price which the Zoo is paying for Mei and Tian, no less — in Atlanta before taking the job here in February. And those Atlanta pandas have already had multiple cubs and might be expecting a third! (Life’s not fair, we know.)
So don’t let us down, Director Kelly. We’re kind of crazy about these things.
