Bei Bei the panda.

angela n. / Flickr

The District’s most widely admired and beloved resident turned four on Thursday, charming hundreds of adoring fans as he ate a delicious frozen cake made of diluted juice, fruit, sweet potatoes, and sugar cane at his party.

But every momentous occasion carries with it a measure of sadness at the passage of time, and Bei Bei the giant panda’s birthday is no different. His fourth year of life marks the time when the National Zoo and its partners at the China Wildlife Conservation Association begin making arrangements to move Bei Bei to China, like his brother Tai Shan and his sister Bao Bao before him.

The National Zoo’s pandas are basically here on loan as a part of its breeding agreement with CWCA, which stipulates that any panda cubs born at the National Zoo can stay there until they turn four years old. So far, that condition has been carried out imperfectly—the oldest child of zoo adults Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, Tai Shan, didn’t leave to China until he was about four-and-a-half, while Bao Bao left at three-and-a-half. The National Zoo still doesn’t have an exact date for Bei Bei’s departure, according to National Zoo spokesperson Devin Murphy, but it won’t be happening for another several months.

“Planning something like this takes a lot of time, a lot of coordination with federal partners and our partners in China, and a lot of logistics,” she says. “Then we have to prepare Bei Bei.”

Turns out, preparing a giant panda for a 16-hour flight is no small task. Before her move, the zoo slowly acclimated Bao Bao to her specially-made crate for the flight over a period of several months. First, they got her used to walking into the crate and back out, Kelly says. Then, they got her used to sitting up in the crate for stretches of time.

“She always had bamboo or some other treat when she was in there, so she knew that when she went into the crate she would get a treat,” Kelly says. “So on the morning she was moving to China, she just walked right in there.”

Bao Bao flew to China in a 16-hour non-stop flight in that crate, and by all accounts handled the whole ordeal pretty well. Zoo staff haven’t yet started training Bei Bei in the same way, Kelly says.

Kelly says the moves have to be planned according to pandas’ preferred weather—they don’t like to be schlepped about in the heat. Accordingly, both Tai Shan and Bao Bao were moved in February.

Regardless of when he leaves, Kelly says D.C. will have several months of notice to come visit Bei Bei before the big day. They will also have a goodbye celebration for him, she says.

With his looming departure, we can only hope that his mother Mei Xiang isn’t faking all of us out again with a pseudopregnancy—D.C. needs as many baby pandas as it can get.

Filed Under: bei bei, national zoo, national zoo panda, smithsonian national zoo,