Pandamonium at Adelaide Zoo
To be honest I wasn't ecstatic about the prospect of visiting Adelaide until I realised there were pandas. Pandas! If it weren't for the fact that a small barricade of ten year olds stood in the way I would have run up to the glass and pressed my nose up against it. Not that its necessary to be all that close. These things are frighteningly large. My husband thought that if they didn't have the glass walls I probably would have suffered the same fate as the woman who entered a panda enclosure overseas and was promptly mauled to death.
Funi, the girl panda was draped unceremoniously over a large fabricated rock trying to ignore the milling crowd as she worked hard to digest 20kg of bamboo. That's how much they eat a day so its a wonder bamboo hasn't learnt to grow even faster. Wang Wang I soon realised knew precisely what his role was in the zoo. He was on display, steadily plodding a route throughout the encosure with great enthusisasm. And why wouldn't he be happy? All his bamboo arrived pre-harvested and there is zero competition to worry about when it comes to the lovely lady-panda in the corner.
Funnily enough after spending the remainder of the week visiting copious cousins, aunties and uncles from my husband's family we realised NONE of them had gone to the zoo. It became ironically clear that the pandas had attracted visitors from interstate and overseas. There were even a lot of Asian tourists for goodness sake where the blessed things run wild but the locals just couldn't give a bamboo stick about them. "We just had so much of all the marketing hype." said one cousin with a shrug. "It's just been panda this, panda that everywhere for months."
Some also wrinkled their nose at the ticket price which I must admit is a bit steep but considering the wonderful work this zoo does breeding endangered species and returning them to the wild its a day well spent. So if you are in Adelaide, don't just quaff some wine and fly home, feel the hair rise up on the back of your neck as you stare into the button-black eyes of the two most extraordinary Chinese immigrants to ever arrive in Australia.
Funi, the girl panda was draped unceremoniously over a large fabricated rock trying to ignore the milling crowd as she worked hard to digest 20kg of bamboo. That's how much they eat a day so its a wonder bamboo hasn't learnt to grow even faster. Wang Wang I soon realised knew precisely what his role was in the zoo. He was on display, steadily plodding a route throughout the encosure with great enthusisasm. And why wouldn't he be happy? All his bamboo arrived pre-harvested and there is zero competition to worry about when it comes to the lovely lady-panda in the corner.
Funnily enough after spending the remainder of the week visiting copious cousins, aunties and uncles from my husband's family we realised NONE of them had gone to the zoo. It became ironically clear that the pandas had attracted visitors from interstate and overseas. There were even a lot of Asian tourists for goodness sake where the blessed things run wild but the locals just couldn't give a bamboo stick about them. "We just had so much of all the marketing hype." said one cousin with a shrug. "It's just been panda this, panda that everywhere for months."
Some also wrinkled their nose at the ticket price which I must admit is a bit steep but considering the wonderful work this zoo does breeding endangered species and returning them to the wild its a day well spent. So if you are in Adelaide, don't just quaff some wine and fly home, feel the hair rise up on the back of your neck as you stare into the button-black eyes of the two most extraordinary Chinese immigrants to ever arrive in Australia.
