My first inkling that something significant was going on was when the I heard the muffled voice of my wife from the den saying “panda motorcade!”
Since I had no idea what she was saying, I just replied with a soothing “that’s nice dear” and went about my business.
That, however, wasn’t going to work.
You see, up here in the suburbs of the nation’s capital, there’s not much more important than pandas. Just about everyone is addicted to these cuddly slapstick knuckleheads of the animal world, and no one takes them more serious than my wife.
She previously watched the National Zoo’s pandacam as if it were an endless loop. We made trips to the zoo to see them, although for all the wild and zany stuff you see them do on Youtube, they just sort of sat there when we made the trek out to Connecticut Ave. Occasionally one would chew on the end of a bamboo stick, and people would react like a religious figure had just uttered a prophecy. But that was about it.
When the pandas went back to China, it was a dark couple of days around here. Dulles Airport is only a few minutes away from our house, and my wife even went out in the front yard that day as the plane was in the air flying overhead, waving a tearful goodbye to them.
The dog was out there with her, looking around like “what am I, chopped liver?”
But this morning two new pandas arrived at Dulles, and my wife with her “panda motorcade” exclamation was communicating to me that they were in transit to the National Zoo. I turned on the television and sure enough, there they were, only it wasn’t just on one channel. I turned on Channel 4, the NBC affiliate, but channels 5, 7 and 9 were doing the same thing, meaning if the president of the United States was to make some far-reaching important announcement, the best he could hope to get would be the same coverage the pandas were now receiving locally.
Stations had choppers in the air covering every angle of the transport. Imagine back in the 1990s when there was wall-to-wall coverage of a certain white Bronco on the freeways of Los Angeles, only change it to the Dulles Toll Road and a Fed Ex truck. That’s what was on every channel this morning here in Ashburn.
Meanwhile, my wife was providing a running play by play filled with excitement, and a sneering look of disgust when I said the details of all this didn’t interest me. She believed if the two trucks carrying the pandas were being led by five motorcycles and followed by local police, state police and ZOO POLICE, then I better daggone well GET interested in all this.
I have since learned that one of the pandas is the grandson of a previous panda here in DC (my wife says it’s “very touching”) and his name is Bao Li (宝力, pronounced BOW-lee), a 3-year-old male panda born on August 4, 2021. His name means “precious strength” or “active and vital power” in Mandarin Chinese, and Bao Li’s grandfather, Bei Bei, was born at the National Zoo in 2013 and returned to China four years later.
The other is Qing Bao (青宝, pronounced ching-BOW), a 3-year-old female panda born on September 12, 2021. Her name combines “green,” evoking the lush mountainous habitat of pandas, and “treasure,” reflecting how cherished she is.
My wife says both are being quarantined, but if they follow the example of the San Diego Zoo when they received pandas, that quarantine will only last 42 days, meaning I’m going to be dragged back to Connecticut Ave. right before Christmas, where I can see the two pandas along with 7 million of my closest friends.
Still, it will be nice for the area, and it should make Christmas shopping easier. Anything with a panda on it will be warmly greeted as a present under the tree.
In the interim, I told my wife that now that the pandas were officially at the zoo at 11:55 AM, I might go write something to remember the occasion.
OK,” she said, “but you better not make fun of me.”
I don’t know where she’d get an idea like that 😊
