OMG, I can’t believe this! I’m not sure that they’d announced it earlier, because apparently the birth occurred at around 4 AM EDT, but they just had it on the local NBC cut from the Weekend Today show. They have had a birth watch on the female panda (lol naturally the female :smack:) for the past several weeks, 24/7, and last night had said that they were down to the last few days. Panda pregnancies, rare as they are, are apparently quite difficult to detect and many times it’s a pseudo pregnancy. But this time it was for real!
Well you can count me in among the folks who will be heading to the National Zoo to see the cub, as soon as they will allow it, that is! I’ll probably wait until the huge crowds have quieted down a bit but I’ve got to see the panda cub.
Good job, you oversized raccoons, you! (Anyone remember the pictures of one of many disastrous reproductive attempts by Hsing Hsing and Ling Ling, where the little panda offspring kind of shot out and hit a wall? No fun whatshoever.)
Ah, we thought they were raccoons for so long, but at the Panda exhibit at the National Zoo a few months ago the Panda volunteer told us that DNA evidence indicates that they really are more like bears.
Cool. I was there about a week or so ago. Although, I won’t be back for a long time (if ever), so I guess that I will never get the chance to actually see the cub. According to the exhibit stuff they had there in the panda house, a newborn cub can fit in the palm of your hand.
The local news just showed the first pics of the panda cub! As the Zoo describes it, it’s about the size “of a stick of butter,” and that looked pretty accurate to me. Word is that Mei Xiang appears to be bonding with the cub and the cub also sounds very healthy - it was wailing away! The Panda house will likely be off-limits to zoo visitors for some time - it will probably be the fall before the cub will debut to the public but there will probably be huge crowds when that happens. In the meantime, though, the Zoo will probably have pics up at their website. Which I don’t happen to remember the URL to off the top of my head, sorry! I will be among the folks to visit the Zoo to see the pandas and cub but will give the crowds a chance to thin out a bit before I venture there.
I’ll probably wait until the huge crowds have quieted down a bit but I’ve got to see the panda cub. 
