An embarrassment of pandas

I never considered what a group of pandas was called until I read an article by Liam Gravvat in USA Today. He very funnily said that it would appear to be a bit of an embarrassment! I mean, who is even considering panda bears or any type of bears with all the problems piling up one on top of the other around the world.

Did we even imagine that the war perpetrated by Russia on the Ukraine people, would cause the population of Sudan (over 3,000 miles away) to be plunged into starvation because gas and food prices have skyrocketed so badly, that aid to the country had to be halted.

That fathers in Sudan are being forced to remove their teenage daughters from school, foregoing their education in return for food to feed their families. The teenage girls, fourteen, maybe younger, are bartered off to older men for marriage in return for cows or whatever is available, so that a village can be fed. One father asked for 100 cows to feed his entire village. After a lot of haggling, he got sixty (60) cows, how long sixty malnourished cows will last for the entire village, I shudder to think. They need help.

Crimes involving guns seem to somehow have become either a fashion statement or an epidemic in the USA. I am now terrified to turn on my computer, because there will be multiple reports of crime plastered all over the front page stories. Not just guns, road rage, women drowning their children. Schools, churches, and innocent people on the streets are all suffering from random acts of unkindness and violence.

Our hearts and thoughts go out to all those whose lives have been directly impacted by suffering all around the world, both during the Pandemic and the after effects of conditions on life as we once knew it, compared to the recent and ongoing changes in life events.

The Supreme court of the land, whom we always looked to for reason and good sense, appears to have suddenly lost all sense of perspective and reason, are amending, radicalizing, dissolving, throwing out and just generally going berserk and willy-nilly with their decision making processes. Are we being possessed by demons or have aliens finally invaded and conquered earth while we were sleeping.

Make no mistake. People have changed, some for the better and others for the worse. We should resolve to fall into the first category and reach out to the pain of the latter in any way that we can.

The world has heated up so badly, it somehow doesn't matter where you are anymore. Weather is doing it's own thing and fluctuating between heat and cool whenever it has a mind to.

What has this got to do with pandas? Nothing. I just got carried away comparing the tiny enjoyable moments to the polar opposite of our existence in the same moment and time.

So, what is a group of pandas called? An Embarrassment. Who knew! They are sometimes called a cupboard or bamboo of pandas. Poor pandas.

Panda bears or giant pandas are endemic to China. They are born the size of a stick of butter, but then grows to become two to three hundred pounds in weight. They consume twenty six to eighty pounds of bamboo shoots and leaves daily. Wild pandas will eat tubers, grass, meat in the form of birds, rodents or carrion. Those in captivity will eat honey, fish, yam, leaves, orange and banana, among other special foods. So I guess they will adapt and eat anything depending on their geographical location, not unlike people, pandas are flexible. Pandas who eat mostly bamboo shoots and leaves tend to lack energy due to the limitation in their diet, and the fact that they poop, ah, defecate some forty times per day. Hence their name. Those in captivity should fare better, since they have a more diverse dietary regimen.

Pandas are cute, lazy and hilariously clumsy, they are believed to live twenty years in the wild and thirty years in captivity. Their clumsy movement and lazy mating habits may be a factor in their dwindling population, and also contribute to the name given to the group.

A few other fun names for other animal groups:

A Flamboyance of Flamingo.

A Kettle of hawks.

A Crash of rhinos.

A Fluffle of bunnies.

A Zeal of zebras.

A Bloat of hippopotamuses.

A Gaggle of geese.

A Congregation of alligators.

A Herd of ass.

A Congress of baboons (Remind you of anything?)

A Clowder of cats.

A Coalition of Cheetahs.

An Intrusion of Cockroaches.

A Murder of crows.

Happy reading.

N.A.