Nope, FedEx won’t take an official position on the team’s name.

Photo by James Di Loreto, courtesy Smithsonian Institution Butterstick, aka Tai Shan, has arrived at his new home at Wolong’s Bifengxia Base in Ya’an, Sichuan, according to a news release from the National Zoo. The panda’s 15-hour non-stop flight left Dulles at around noon on Thursday, and landed safely in Chengdu at 4:26 p.m. local time. While Tai is ostensibly in China to get busy with that country’s collection of foxy lady pandas, he…

Say what you will about obsessive panda fans becoming overly emotional about Tai Shan leaving D.C. this morning for China, but there’s one group of people who have every right to cry: the National Zoo’s panda team. Animal keeper Laurie Thompson has been taking care of pandas at the Zoo for 15 years, and has worked with Butterstick, as he’s commonly known, since he was literally the size of a stick of butter. Watching him…

Butterstick may be leaving us in less than a week, but at least he’ll be doing it in style. The National Zoo’s most famous panda will be loaded up into a crate early next Thursday morning, driven to Dulles International Airport, and then board a FedEx airplane for a non-stop flight to China. It may not sound like the most luxurious way to travel, but FedEx vice president of operations John Dunavant reassured reporters…