Why yes, we have gotten quite a bit of mileage out of the National Zoo’s squeelicious lion cubs recently. (Thanks for noticing!) They’re the first new lion cubs at the Zoo in 20 years — the chance to overwhelm you with this much winsome imagery only comes along every so often. Plus, this is what you get when we don’t get any baby pandas to fawn over.

But back to the lions: the little furballs got dumped into a ten-foot deep moat in the Zoo’s Great Cats Exhibit so that they could find their water legs — four of the seven newborns had to pass a swim test before they could roam around the habitat. They all passed, three with flying colors. That’s a very good thing, because if I had to write something about one of these things drowning, I’d be totally ruined for the rest of the day. Up next for the cubs: rabies shots!