Posted on 09/24/2023 8:35:05 AM PDT by NautiNurse
WASHINGTON—There are constants to life in the nation’s capital: sweltering summers, political dysfunction and, for much of the last 50 years, giant pandas.
Later this year, though, the three pandas living in the National Zoo will be sent to China, which has the rights to pandas in captivity all over the world. Their departure will leave Washington without at least one of the rotund, cuddly-looking bears for only the second time since Richard Nixon’s breakthrough with Beijing in 1972.
The breakdown in U.S.-China relations is bamboozling many in the city. Norma Valentini, a 52-year-old registered nurse who grew up in D.C. visiting the pandas, is finding the farewell difficult to bear.
“They’ve been here all my life,” she said. She comes to the zoo at least once a week these days to bid them goodbye. “It’s very, very sad.”
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By Dec. 7, the animals will return to Chinese conservationists, who have essentially been renting the adult pandas to the National Zoo, generally for about $1 million a year since 2000. Under the agreement—part of China’s global, soft-power “panda diplomacy”—cubs born in Washington go back to China, too.
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How do you even send a panda to China? FedEx , apparently. The logistics company will provide a plane to transport the three animals, though like much else in Washington, their exact date of departure is a closely held secret.
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(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Wonderful video about the giant panda breeding center.
Rest assured, there is a nice return for all of the panda merch sold by the Smithsonian.
We should have cloned the pandas. Then returned the original pandas to China. But our government isn't smart enough.
They should take back all the “students” and scientists the have sent here.
Instead, they are freely coming across what used to be known as our southern border.
Governor DeSantis could declare the Great State of Florida a panda sanctuary. That might be fun.
SQUIRREL!
Gee, is there anything more important going on in the District of Corruption?
Yeah, ensuring the coming Trump jury pool has all the necessary haters.
Too warm in Florida for pandas. We already have alligators, an elephant sanctuary, flamingos and the Florida panther.
When dullards have a one track mind...
“clone them”
Now you are thinking like a billionaire.
Clone them and keep some for friends and family.
“any babies belong solely to China”
If our twenty one intelligence services can’t hide a few pandas in underground military bases they really need to be disbanded for gross incompetence and negligence.
“ The breakdown in U.S.-China relations is bamboozling many in the city. Norma Valentini, a 52-year-old registered nurse who grew up in D.C. visiting the pandas, is finding the farewell difficult to bear.”
Writers and editors today don’t even know what words mean.
If they want then back let them know that we will put them in shipping crates and deliver them to the gates of the Chinese embassy. They can arrange any additional shipping from that point on.
“We rent them for $1 million each a year....AND...any babies belong solely to China.”
with slight modification to apply to us in this Country:
We birth and rent them for $1 million each a year....AND...any babies belong solely to the State.
Biden is such a crappy President that China is taking our Panda bears.
Not to mention all the poisonous spiders and snakes.
I’d rather feed the illegal aliens to the pandas…
Good idea!
Florida only has six types of poisonous snakes: Copperhead (in the FL panhandle), Cottonmouth, and Coral, along with three versions of rattlers: Timber, Pygmy, Diamondback.
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