Addicted to Pandas (And other animals)

Some of my favorite childhood memories are the visits I would make to a little zoo/botanical garden called The Living Desert. It’s located in Palm Springs (Palm Desert, technically) and it was like journeying into another world. The sprawling nature trails with plants and animals unique to deserts from around the world, the “dark room” with all of the creepy/crawly night creatures, the Golden Eagles that were bigger than me at the time…it was a perfect place for memories and to plant the seeds of my future love of animals.

So I was very excited to hear that the Smithsonian National Zoological Park was engaged in a Giant Panda breeding program and that Mei Xiang was expecting. I read about the birth of the new female cub on August 23rd and was delighted. It wasn’t until about two and half months later that I discovered the Panda Cams. Then they were shut down during the US Government Shutdown. And then I belatedly started taking screenshots. This is the first picture I took of the little panda cub, who was not yet named.

Yep, there she is, being cuddled by her mother. Adorable, right?

My wife and I are deathly allergic to every animal it’s legal to own. So nowadays we check in on little Bao Bao and her mother several times a day. We’ve kind of adopted them. Here’s a few more precious moments of them.