In the Mood!

Zoo day. After all the articles in the papers about the pandas getting frisky, I went to see them before the talk. It was a sunny day and the zoo gets mobbed later.

Anyway, they were. Frisky. She was stomping around her outside enclosure, and he was sitting chomping away on bamboo, leaning back, legs akimbo, displaying his bits. Fortunately, he had built up quite a pile of ripped off bamboo bits, which covered his modesty. But I think he cared not a jot!

He's getting in the mood, eating non stop. Male pandas come into season too, and if they don't coincide their couple of days, that's it for another year. Seems a damn stupid system, if you ask me.

I walked up by Mr Stellar Sea Eagle. He wasn't on his branch, but I could see he was right at the window, peering out! I ran round to get there, and he was inches from me. He spied a tasty little toddler, dressed in pink, and was most interested. SCARY!

The talk today was not the one intended. This week's speaker must have forgotten his prior engagement and went to China instead. So a few of them cobbled together a few past presentations, which were also interesting.

The first bloke, incidentally the Education Officer, was the worst least interesting. Although he did give us the news that Lesley, a female monkey had been euthenised during the week. She'd been in a fight and had a broken back and broken ribs! Wow! That's some fight!

He'd throw up figures eg '9 billion people watched the pandas leaving China and arriving in Scotland'. (Where does that figure come from?).

He'd pause and say, 'Wow. That's a LOT of people.'

Then he'd have another figure: '400 million people read articles about the pandas'. (Where does that figure come from?).

'Wow. That's a LOT of people.'

We had a wee student who is studying the pandas. There are always students sitting watching the monkeys and jotting down behaviour. But I imagine watching the pandas and noting behaviour can get rather boring. And the graph must be very boring. But they are changing behaviour coming into the mating season, so it's all very important.

The chap who looks after the pandas was really interesting. All about training them to lie back, or come to the bars and sit so that they can take daily swabs, or check the old fella's bits. This has to be done every day at the moment, and this way they don't have to knock them out each time.

Then the plant man told us about bamboo. He wants to plant a whole area of the stuff, and they could be self sufficient, because apparently it costs a bomb, as they eat tonnes of it. Of course, as he said, it should have been planted years before the pandas arrived.

So all in all another good zoo day. I chose the ocellated turkey for my blip today because she's so spectacular. (I've been told it's a female). The most beautiful body. Pity about the head... Every time I've been there, she's been hiding in the undergrowth, but her feathers really stand out against this background.

Off into town now to meet a pal and take her to My Club! They must be missing me!