Butterstick Fan Club

Tai Shan to Remain Through 2009

and, today’s DCist article Butterstick Avoids Deportation uses one of my photos!

This is from Saturday’s visit to the zoo. This is the first time that I have seen Butterstick while he was inside (except the first time, back when you needed tickets). He was at his cutest.

You can see more of my Butterstick photos on Flickr.

Butterstick and his mom have been living separately since Feb. 22, according to the National Zoo website. Butterstick is 19 months old, which is about the time that panda cubs in the wild leave their mothers.

I know that this is the way it’s supposed to be, but it still makes me sad. I hope Butterstick isn’t lonely.

I ended up going to the zoo two more times last week. I went on Thursday, when it was for FONZ members only (Friends of the National Zoo). It was kind of foggy that morning and they were also running their fog machines to make extra fog. I love this picture of Mei Xiang in the fog. More pictures.

I went again on Saturday for the grand opening celebration, when they were handing out stuffed pandas. It was really crowded so I didn’t get many good pictures.

Yesterday, I got up super-early and went to the zoo to see the grand opening of the new Asia Trail. It is beautiful! I’m so excited that the pandas and other animals have such an exciting new habitat to live in. It’s a lot bigger than I thought it would be, and they put in a lot of effort to make it look “natural” — there might be cement here and there, but you certainly can’t tell because it’s disguised pretty well!

I posted several photos on Flickr, of Butterstick, Mei Xiang, Tian Tian, the sloth bears, a red panda, and the otters.

One of my photos was on DCist today, which was pretty cool. They’ve used a few of my photos so far, but this was the first Butterstick photo!

I am going to try to go tomorrow morning — the Asia Trail is open onto to FONZ (Friends of the National Zoo) members for the next couple mornings — but I don’t know if I can manage to get out of bed so early again.

The big grand opening celebration is Saturday, so hopefully I will make it then!

I just got a new camera (5 megapixels! 10x optical zoom!!!) which means I can now get much better pictures of Butterstick:

Click through to the photo on Flickr and click on All Sizes, then Original Size to see the awesome detail in this Butterstick close-up. It’s like you’re inches away.

Speaking of inches away — did you hear about the drunk guy who jumped into a panda enclosure in the Beijing Zoo? The man just wanted to get a hug, but apparently the panda was a bit upset about being woken up from his nap.

There have been a few times I’ve been tempted to jump in and give Butterstick a hug.

I went to the zoo on Monday and for the first time since he’s been on view, I didn’t get to see Butterstick.

It was about 8:30 and according to the other onlookers, he was still napping inside. Usually he comes out right away when they open the doors around 7:30.

Perhaps he knew it was Labor Day and decided to take the day off.

I went to the zoo on Saturday and Butterstick was at his cutest. I watched him for over an hour, before he settled down for a nap. The funniest part was when Mei Xiang was trying to nap on the rocks, and Butterstick kept climbing on top of her, trying to play. More photos

My copy of Panda Cam: A Nation Watches Tai Shan the Panda Cub Grow just arrived in the mail. It’s a book published by the Friends of the National Zoo, with pictures of Butterstick during his first seven months, along with commentary from the zookeepers. One of my favorite quotes from the book:

Tai Shan was given the opportunity to go outside this morning but declined and chose to do some rock climbing. In the middle of this walk-about, he seemed to collapse midstep, along a particularly uncomfortable-looking rock ledge, and fell into a sound sleep.