Wolong Panda Preserve
Sichuan Province, China
Trip Log, Day two at the Wolong Panda Preserve
November, 2006
Today is our second day at the Wolong Panda Preserve. This morning we met at 8:00 A.M. as usual,
for breakfast in the Panda Inn dining room.
This is where we eat most of our meals while at the panda preserve. The restaurant staff is always friendly and
very quick with service. As soon as I
sat down they brought me tea. We eat our
meals traditional Chinese family style, so everyone has the opportunity to
taste many different dishes. For
breakfast I usually eat a plain bread roll and a hard boiled egg. There are many more choices, but I eat light
in the morning.
We were all excited and anxious prior to beginning our first
work day here at the preserve. We were
told to meet our “masters” at 8:30 inside the panda garden. The masters are the panda keepers, trainers
and veterinarians who will be our mentors during our volunteer work days.
Each of us was assigned his or her own master, who we will
work with and assist as they perform their regular work chores. Each of these professionals has a regular
schedule of pandas they care for. The
number of pandas varies from 1 to 5 or 6 depending on what work effort is
required for the individual animals.
My panda trainers name is Sung. She is a very experienced panda trainer who
had only one panda in her care while I was there. Sung was responsible for rehabilitating and
training Drong Drong. He is an addition
to the Panda Garden who was discovered by local mountain villagers. When they found him he was sick and in need
of care. The Preserve rescued him from
the wild. This is how many pandas find
their way to the panda preserve.
Sung was given the responsibility of getting Drong into good
physical shape and then to train him with all the behaviors necessary for him
to become one of the strong male breeders.
She must train him to react to many instructions including climbing into
the cage that is used for physical inspection and manipulation by the
veterinarians. This training is time
intensive, which is why Sung had only Drong Drong to care for.
At 8:30 we all walked from the dining room over to the Panda
Garden, just a few hundred yards away.
It is a real treat to come out of the hotel in the morning, walk to the
preserve and be one of only a handful of people in the park.
The Panda Garden is vibrantly alive in the early
morning. There is usually a misty haze
covering the mountains that climb steeply from both sides of this narrow river
canyon. The pandas know that the keepers
are on their way with the morning treats.
They look forward to receiving the days supply of fresh green tender
bamboo. Every enclosure has pandas on
the move. Up in trees, down along
walking lanes and just sitting near the entrances to their private homes, the
pandas are all waiting.
I was introduced to Sung, who is a get to it, straight
forward kind of person, just as I am. We
hit it off right from the start. Sung
has limited English and I have very limited Chinese, but we had no
communication problems whatsoever.
The first thing Sung did was take me to the bakery where we
picked up the morning ration of panda cake.
Panda cake is made from a special formula developed at the Wolong Panda
Preserve. The mix consists of corn meal,
ground bamboo, carrots, apple, oil and some other tasty ingredients. It is considered too rough on the digestive
system for humans to eat, but of course I had to take a taste. Like corn bread, but better! The finished panda cakes are wheels about 10”
in diameter and 3 or 4 inches thick.
The pandas love this tasty treat which makes it perfect to
use as a training aid. Because it is
vitamin and calorie loaded, it is very good for those pandas being
rehabilitated after rescue from bad situations in the wild
Once Sung had carefully measured out the morning quota of
panda cake for Drong Drong we grabbed a large two wheeled cart, a couple of
rakes, a scooping device and headed over to Drong’s enclosure.
Baby pandas are cute and cuddly and we all want to hug
them. Adult pandas are kind of cuddly
appearing too, until you see the very large bear-like claws. We are instructed to stay out of reach of
those sharp claws, which they use to defend themselves in the wild.
Using the panda cake, Sung began the morning training
session with Drong Drong. First she had
him sit on the scale that is permanently mounted in one corner of his
house. Drong weighed in at 106 kilos. Sung said that was good. This is close to Drong’s ideal weight. They estimated his age at about 8 years old.
Next Sung put Drong through a series of stretching and
flexibility exercises. These are
designed to strengthen his hind quarters ( a weak point in panda design). This strengthening will make Drong a better
breeding panda male.
When the exercises were complete for the moment, but some
panda cake remained, Sung handed it to me and motioned that I should break it
up into bite sized pieces and hand feed Drong Drong. I accepted this assignment with a big smile
on my face.
Drong knew to sit against the cage door and place his face
close to the bars. He would open his
mouth and stick his long pink tongue out, then wait for me to place a bite onto
his tongue. I couldn’t resist enticing
him to lick my hand. (I probably wasn’t
supposed to do that because I imagine putting your hand inside a pandas mouth
could be considered dangerous.) I
discovered that if I withheld the panda cake, just a moment, Drong would lean
forward and stick his tongue out even further.
When he accidentally licked my right hand this way, I
immediately pushed the small piece of cake into his mouth while his tongue was
still touching me. We did this a couple
times in a row and Drong being the smart guy that he is, picked up on the
routine. From then on when I placed my
hand just outside the bars Drong would lean forward and give my hand a good
lick. When I related this experience
later, I was surprised to find out that I was the only one of our group who got
their hand licked.
Anyway, after this training exercise Sung closed Drong Drong
inside his house while she and I went into the outside enclosure and cleaned
the fallen leaves from the moat. I
guess fishing for leaves took us an hour or so.
Then we returned to the workers private area, where we had a 45 minute
wait until the next training and feeding exercise. I left the employee rest area and wondered
alone through the panda garden, enjoying my private time here at the Preserve.
My second session that morning with Drong was a repeat of
the first one, except there was no cage cleaning required. We just put Drong Drong through his training
exercises and hand fed him panda cake.
My morning work period ended around 11:15 AM.
I went back to my room and organized some notes while
waiting to meet everyone else for lunch.
Lunch found all of us over talkative and excited about our morning. Not one of us was disappointed in how the
morning had gone. The “work” was really
not difficult. Raking leaves and
scooping a few piles of bamboo green panda poop barely qualified as work.
A special training session was scheduled for Drong Drong in
the afternoon. So immediately after
lunch Sung and I took some more panda cake and put Drong through his regular
exercise training program one more time.
Then a short rest break, which I used to explore a different part of the
Panda Garden. Around 2:30 Sung and I
wondered back to Drong Drong’s cage where we met with two of the vets and the
head panda keeper.
Sung called Drong over to the door to his house. The training cage was already pushed up
against the bars. One of the others slid
the bars aside and Sung directed Drong Drong into the small training and
handling cage. Drong obediently crawled
inside. At Sung’s direction he lay down
on his back and extended his right arm through the main cage into a specially
built appendage that sticks out one side of the cage. This small cage encloses the pandas arm and
paw.
The small arm cage makes it easier and safer for the
veterinarians to work on the pandas. The
arm is exposed so that if they need to draw blood samples or to give injections
the pandas arm is exposed and accessible.
Next Sung had our panda grasp the bars on the side of the
cage with each of his four paws. To
reward him, Sung used a small training clicker which she repeatedly clicked,
just as she fed him small pieces of panda cake.
Over time the clicker noise becomes attached to the taste of the panda
cake and the animal can be rewarded with just the clicker. This is important because the rich panda cake
must be rationed. Too much is not good
for the pandas digestive system and causes a very messy clean up the next
morning.
The training exercise consumed our afternoon work
period. Once we had muscled the cage
back into the panda house and released Drong Drong to his outside enclosure,
Sung said we had another 45 minute break before the next session.
I used this time to watch some of the baby pandas being hand
fed their bottles. The babies are fed
and cared for inside a special nursery area.
The workers are very protective of the babies. For some reason the public is not allowed to
look at the baby pandas when they are out getting some sunshine or playing. The only time the public can view the panda
babies is when they are in the nursery being cared for.
Us volunteer workers were able to sit alongside the babies
as they played and just lay in the warm sunshine, soaking up the sparse
mountain sun. Each baby had his or her
own personality. At two months of age
they were still not real strong and active.
Most of them would just lay and enjoy the warmth of the sun. However, there was one precocious child who
would not stay with the group. As soon
as he was placed on the warm asphalt, he began crawling away from the
group. His babysitter would let him get
about 10 yards from the others, then she would scoop him up and carry him back
to the others. This action was repeated
over and over all the time I watched the squirming pile of panda babies.
My last work session of the day began around 3:00 and went
until 4:00 PM. We carried some fresh
bamboo over to the cage and took away the old stuff. Then Drong did his exercises one last time
that day. By that time he had the hand
licking routine down pat. I placed my
hand next to the cage, he would reach out and give me a big tongue swipe and I
would place some panda cake on top of his tongue.
Drong being a male panda can be really vocal. The males like to make noise while going
through their exercises or while just sitting around wasting the day away. The females are quieter and more
reserved.
My “work day” was finished at 4:00. Dinner was at 6:00 PM so I had two hours to
go and explore a nearby canyon. There is
a stream that runs from this canyon and it looked like it would be a great spot
to explore alone. I put on a warm jacket
and headed out to see what was up that canyon.
15 minutes up the trail I came to an old animal
enclosure. I learned this was where they
sometimes housed new pandas when they first arrived at the Panda Preserve in
the earlier years when the preserve was just getting started.
The trail was steep and slippery. The mountains are always misty. Light rain showers are not uncommon here in
the foothills. The stream flowed quite
fast with many gurgling ponds. It seemed
like the perfect environment for trout, but the local people all assured me
there were no fish in the streams.
There were dozens of mushrooms. Everywhere you looked there were various
fungi growing. Golden yellow, wood brown
and even some that looked like they would glow in the dark. I was really tempted to collect some, but the
danger from eating strange mushrooms kept me from gathering any. Next time I will find a local expert to walk
with me and gather some fresh mushrooms.
I got back to the hotel in time to shower before
dinner. Dinner consisted of 8 or 9
different dishes. Every meal is an
adventure all its own. By now we all had
a favorite dish we liked to see, but the other dishes were always something new
and interesting to taste. In the
mountains, peppers and cabbage are two staple foods and each meal had at least
one dish of each. There was always some
type of chicken or fish and usually a pork dish as well. Several tasty vegetable dishes were also the
norm.
That night I planned to go out in search of a wild leopard,
so as soon as we finished eating I went to my room for a nap, while everyone
else took off to explore the countryside around the Panda Preserve.
All in all my first day of work at the Wolong Panda Preserve
was everything I hoped it would be. I
could not have asked for anything different than what I got. Because this is a real life experience that
unfolds in real time as the panda trainers go about their daily work, every
persons experience is different.
I was the only one whose panda licked their hand. I like to think that is because Drong Drong
and I formed an instant and very special bond.
But probably it was because Drong is a pretty smart guy and figured out
right away what I wanted from him. Of
course I have lots of animal training experience which might have helped us get
the hand licking action down right away.
That’s all I have time to write at the moment. I hope you enjoyed my first day volunteering
at the preserve as much as I did.
Keith
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