2009 part 2: Those Effin' Pandas

2009 produced it’s fair share of new celebrities. People who were once unknown but by year’s end had become household names. Adelaide’s two biggest stars for the year weren’t people, but were in fact Giant Pandas: Wang Wang and Funi.

Wang Wang (the male) is on the left, Funi (the female) is on the right. No wait, Funi is on the left and Wang Wang is on the right. No...I was right the first time, Wang Wang on the...Fuck it, I’ll give Wang Wang a Male wig and Funi a Female one so we can tell them apart.

Better.

What follows is a timeline of notable events in the Adelaide Panda Phenomenon.

2007: Chinese President Hu Jintao offers two pandas to Australia as a goodwill gesture during a visit to Australia.

When Hu Jintao offers pandas, you best take them.

It is decided that Adelaide Zoo will house the panda enclosure. This is a Zoo where a 75 year old Flamingo was nearly beaten to death in 2008, and a bored Orangutan simply climbed out of his enclosure and went for a walk in 2009. We also own an epileptic Lion. If the director of the Zoo turns out to be David Lynch, I would not be surprised.

The pandas chosen for the Australian adventure are Wang Wang and Funi. “Funi” means “lucky one” which is kind of nice, I guess. “Wang Wang” means “net net”, which makes no fucking sense whatsoever.

June 2008: Thailand learns of Australia’s impending panda extravaganza, and tries to steal their thunder by releasing pictures of their own family of pandas. Some notable animal experts doubt the validity of their claim.

January 2009: With news of a late 2009 opening of the panda enclosure, the panda news machine starts to heat up.

April 2009: The panda news hits full swing, as Wang Wang and Funi grace the front covers of South Australian newspapers (the Sunday Mail and the Advertiser) and magazines.

May 2009: The general public starts to tire of panda news.

June 2009: Wang Wang and Funi are declared the most important addition to the Adelaide Zoo, since the extremely rare Whore-Turtle “Francine” of 1993.

July 2009: The reveal date edges closer, as the media ups the ante with even more coverage of the panda story. Front page news gives way to four page spreads and fold outs. Radio stations get on the band wagon with promotions and gimmicks, including triple M’s mind blowingly clever wordplay:

August 2009: The general public starts to choke on the saturation of panda news, and their fatigue gives way to a slowly simmering hatred.

September 2009: Panda merchandising goes into overdrive. Consumers could now get their hands on:

The Wang Wang and Funi Book.

The Wang Wang and Funi dolls.

The Wang Wang and Funi Commemorative stamps.

The Wang Wang and FuniBoard Game.

I’m not sure what this is. Backscratcher maybe?

October 2009: The Wang Wang and Funi Christmas float is revealed to the public.

Early December: Almost every man, woman, and child within the limits of the greater Adelaide area have well and truly had a gutful of “those fucking pandas”.

November 25th: (From the LA Times): According to Zoos SA president Heather Caddick, the pandas are expected to generate more than $600 million (Australian) for the South Australia state economy during their time here, with an anticipated 262,000 foreign visitors and 1.3 million Australians visiting Adelaide to see the animals.

That’s a lot of cash, more than enough to cover the $1 million a year hire of the pandas, and the $8 million it took to build the enclosure. Kind of makes me wonder why there are so many charities and fund raisers set up for the panda cause. It also makes me wonder why foreign visitors would fly all the way to Adelaide just to see the pandas, it’s not something we’re usually synonymous with.

Mexico, France and Germany also have giant pandas in their zoos. I bet you didn‘t know that. And if you did, did you ever sit down and think “I would love to visit Paris. Check out the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the pandas....”?

Probably not.

November 13th: The float is included in the annual christmas pageant, as well as two actors in panda suits seen here with the King and Queen of the pageant. Staring at this picture makes me wish I had some Shrooms.

November 28th 2009: The fucking pandas finally arrive in Adelaide. Their plane lands by a runway lined with giant plastic pandas, and well wishers who stopped snorting glue long enough to put together welcome signs.

December 11th: The pandas are revealed for the first time to a lucky group at a high society fund raising dinner at the zoo. Tickets went for a hefty $1000 a head, and it was unclear whether you actually got to fuck the pandas for that price. Wang Wang and Funi were welcomed to Australia by Governor-General Quentin Bryce (who wikipedia tells me is actually a chick), and Chinese Ambassador Zhang Junsai declared that he already had some great names worked out for the future offspring. This was good news, as usually baby animals in the Adelaide Zoo are named by school kids, in competitions promoted by McDonalds or other fast food establishments. This process can lead to some embarrassments, such as in June last year when a retarded kid by the name of Eric won the opportunity to name the new cheetah cub.

It’s a moot point anyway, as a panda cub may not even eventuate. The mating season window for a giant panda is exceptionally small, with the female having an estrous cycle lasting only 2 – 3 days, which occurs only once a year. Half the time the female produces a cub, only to sit on the fucking thing and kill it anyway. If she has two, she will abandon one and leave it to die. The father plays no role in raising the young. Is there any wonder this fucking species is endangered?

I’ll stop writing for a second, because cutting and pasting from wikipedia is producing far more amusing results:

”Initially the primary method of breeding Giant Pandas in captivity was by artificial insemination, as they seemed to lose their interest in mating once they were captured. This led some scientists to try extreme methods such as showing them videos of giant Pandas mating and giving the males Viagra.”

Indeed.

The Berlin Zoo has a panda named Bao Bao that has not mated in 25 years, despite various attempts at hooking him up. We’ve got Wang Wang and Funi on loan for less than half of that time scale.

I wouldn’t be painting the panda cub nursery anytime soon.

February 1st 2010: Uncle Beef writes a post about Wang Wang and Funi.


FOOTNOTE: Here is a quick guide for the non-South Australians explaining a few entities you may not be familiar with.

The Sunday Mail: Our perennial weekend news paper. As a whole, South Australians generally don’t take a shining to anything exciting, dangerous or controversial. Low key and up beat is the order of the day, and the Sunday Mail represents this ideology.

Front page news will include a picture of school kids celebrating their perfect High School graduation scores, a retired footballer celebrating the birth of his third child, or a photo of a disgruntled pensioner in her front yard leaning against her gate – angry at the local hoons who drive their cars late at night. If you explore the paper deeper, you may find a small article about an earthquake or a presidential assassination somewhere on page 37.

I had to give the Sunday Mail kudos a few months ago though. Usually I scroll through the paper with deepening apathy (I read it because they usually keep a copy in our staff canteen), but they actually got an emotional response out of me. In a late December edition, there was a whole section on top fives for the year (movies, tv shows etc). One writer put together a list of “Top 5 things we are sick of”, and Wang Wang and Funi were included on that list as a pair of overhyped, overrated pandas. This was after a full year of Sunday Mail front pages and two page spreads reporting on the animals. I physically frowned at the hypocrisy on display.

It’s not all bad with the Sunday Mail though. Due to it’s many pages, it is ideal for spreading out on the kitchen floor when you are toilet training your domestic pets. It also makes a decent makeshift club when rolled up tightly, and ideal for hitting homeless people with.

The Advertiser: is pretty much identical to the Sunday mail, but as it is a daily publication, it is less formidable as a weapon. I found a homeless woman going through the cans in my bin today, and it took five swings of my rolled up Advertiser before she ran off crying. It would have only taken one swing with the Sunday mail.

Triple M: is that laborious radio channel you’ve probably caught your parents listening to. Though you may not have Triple M in your city, you would most definitely have a similar beast on your radio dial. It’s that station with the vanilla hosts who often do such “edgy” things as start Battle of the Sexes competitions whereby bored housewives are encouraged to ring up and talk about how badly their husbands snore. The hosts will embark on pointless conversations, until they run out of shit to say and then will literally look up jokes on the internet to tell (have you heard the latest Tiger Woods joke?? LOLZ!!!). The music consists of one cassette tape they bought in the late 80’s consisting of American Pie, Piano Man, Khe San, and half a dozen Crowded House tunes. They leave this album on repeat, breaking it up occasionally with commercials for local bakeries and car dealerships.

It’s piss.

The Christmas Pageant: Is an annual parade held down North terrace, and is the biggest of it’s kind in the world. The pageant has been running since 1933, and last year was led by Pogo the clown:

Because nothing says Christmas like a terrifying 20 foot clown.

The Governor General of Australia: This is more an explanation for the international readers. Australia is part of the Commonwealth, meaning we are under Britain’s wing. This means that we have to go to stupid wars happening thousands of miles away that having nothing to do with us. But to be fair, it also means bastards like me can go live and work in the UK for a few years. The Governor General (who is currently Quentin Bryce, a name that sounds half Reservoir Dogs, half The Power of One, but as I pointed out earlier, is actually a chick) is one of those useless figureheads Australia needs as a Commonwealth. Her responsibilities include hosting Dinners for pandas, playing online poker with the Queen once a week, and getting free Jamie Oliver cook books in the mail.

Thus end my panda post, which honestly turned out to be ten times longer than I was expecting. Next up: Celebrity Deaths of 2009. FUN!