Finally! A Panda We Can Bring Home!

The Cincinnati Zoo red pandas are all over the news and Youtube. People can't seem to get enough of them running, jumping, rolling through the snow.

Even I look at the videos.
That is rather unusual. I do not usually have the patience for videos to wind through their interminable cuteness. I usually do not make it through the introductory 20 second advertisement. I hit the (x) in the upper right, and that is that.

Well, the red pandas -or lesser pandas - are so much more interesting than those lazy lummoxes, the black and white Giant Pandas that we have been sold a bill of goods on.

I remember standing around the National Zoo in D.C. as the crowd was buzzing with anticipation whether the Giant Pandas, Mei Tsiang and Tian Tian,  would deign to give us a glimpse of them. Those zoo goers who were more into panda lore held forth on the time table and schedule of Mei Tsiang and Tian Tian, how reclusive they were, how private they were, and how they hatred the paparazzi... which I guessed was supposeds to mean "us", so I slipped my camera unobtrusively into my pocket.

If they did come out, there was a chorus of "oohs" and "ahhs" as the two slow and poky bears chewed on a bamboo shoot or wandered aimlessly in circles.

Far be it from Mei Tsiang and Tian Tian to run, jump, and roust-about. Always in black-and-white, dressed to the nines, and sitting about the Drones Club, now and then lumbering over to the billiard room to chew on a cue.

If I were Broadway Danny Rose, I'd drop them stuffed shirt pandas like a hot potato, and sign up them red pandas, and after a summer in the Poconos, book 'em into the Orpheum circuit. I can see Variety now:

 Peppy Pandas Break Broadway Box Office !

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