Tai Shan is being deported to China on February 4. Rather than getting misty-eyed about his impending departure, I say, good riddance. That’s right–I’m anti-panda.
Get to steppin', Butterstick.
The Supreme Court recently affirmed personal freedom of speech rights for corporations. I’d like to think that if there actually was a prosopopoetic corporation, he would sound like the stiff at FedEx who participated in the Washington Post’s Live Online discussion from last Friday. He deferred almost every question to animal experts at The National Zoo, who were not actually part of the chat. After a while people must have realized that a discussion with the zoo’s shipping vendor was just stupid, so they started asking silly questions:
Washington, D.C.: Will Tai Shan be given a tour of the cockpit during the flight? Where will you store the panda poop produced during the flight?
Dave Lange: The pandas will remain in their custom-made enclosures during the flight. The animal care experts will have everything they need to make the animals comfortable during the flight
[...]
Springfield, USA: Will the Tai Shan shipment receive a FedEx tracking number, and if so can it be tracked via the tracking website?
Dave Lange: Tai Shan and Mei Lan will be traveling on a International Air Waybill but not tracked in the traditional FedEx manner.