Well, actually red pandas from the Himalayas but they were orange pandas to me and you can see why!
Had a day off work today and decided to do something very different from sitting in an office or home in front of a computer so a mid-week trip to the zoo was in order. We got to feed and pet the orange pandas as part of Wellington Zoo’s Encounter programme – they do the pandas, giraffes, cheetahs and big cats.
4 people at a time were allowed into the enclosure with the zoo keeper and we visited with 2 sets of panda pairs. They ate fruit out of our hands or fingers and put their paws up on our knees when we were sitting on logs in their enclosure.
One of the pandas was so eager that when The Mister was the 1st one to sit down it leapt right up onto his knee like a cat!
It was such a great time – the 4 pandas definitely all had personalities of their own and it’s just so hard to explain how insanely cute they were. They had warm little feet and the older ones were coarse to pat, a bit like an old dog’s fur, and the younger ones were quite soft and cat-like. Beneath their orange fur they had a thick downy layer almost like possum fur. Their little faces were just so adorable.
When they’d filled up on fruit they went back into the trees and fell asleep almost immediately!
Loads more photos on Flickr.
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[…] move to the States so as well as visit shops in town and cough, The Mall in The Hutt, we went up to visit the orange pandas again. We made up the foursome with Jif. It was great to see them again – we saw 2 of the […]
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