Fu Bao stretched. Her black-and-white fur was stark against the jade-like bamboo leaves. The forest stirred around her, alive with whispers of the dawn. This young giant panda ambled along the soft earth, pausing to nibble on a tender bamboo shoot. The flavor of fresh sweetness filled her mouth — a taste hardcoded in her DNA, passed down through generations of pandas in the rolling mountains of Gansu, China.
“There you are. I swear you get bigger each day,” Tang Wei, the caretaker at the panda research center, said, laughing. “Eat up. Today’s a big day for you.”
Suddenly, unusual footsteps and voices crashed into the stillness of the morning. Strange hands ushered her into a large wooden crate. She clung to Tang Wei’s words trailing off in the background, “Don’t worry, Fu Bao; you’ll be back in ten years. I’ll miss you.”
The distance swallowed the forest as it receded, taking with it everything she had ever known. Where were they taking her?
Time passes… and passed. At last, the crate opened with a bright light and a long creak.
“Welcome to Atlanta, Fu Bao,” an overly cheerful voice greeted in a tongue Fu Bao didn’t understand.
The air here was thicker, infused with scents of pine, cologne, and a hint of bleach. Nowhere to be seen were the towering bamboo trees and Gansu mountains, replaced by strange glass structures and a human attempt at terraced landscaping with a splash of trees here and there. She thought, “You call this my natural habitat?”
Days. Crawled. By. Fu Bao’s heart felt like a baby reaching for its mother but not finding her. She missed Tang Wei. The curated bamboo they gave her was abundant but lacked the juicy, rich flavors of her native forest.
One morning, a frantic ruckus near her hammock drew her attention. She lumbered to investigate.
A little red panda desperately rummaged through the underbrush, its autumn fur abristle. “Hey, you!” he called out. “Have you seen it?”
Fu Bao tilted her head. “Seen what? And who are you?”
“I’m Wei-Long,” he urgently replied. “An acorn cap off the oldest oak in Sichuan – it’s gone!”
“What? How’d you lose it?” Fu Bao now matched Wei-Long’s intensity.
Wei-Long paced, tail flicking restlessly. “It was taken! I saw a shadow last night and when I woke up, poof, it was gone.” He wailed, “It’s all I have left from home.”
At once, Fu Bao blurted out, “I’ll help you find it.” Her determination came from a well-known place of the pain of losing old connections.
This unlikely partnership gathered steam day by day. Fu Bao and Wei-Long searched everywhere in their enclosure for clues. They asked other animals, looked into every corner, and scrutinized for anything suspicious.
One afternoon, “Look here,” Fu Bao cried, pointing. “Fresh tracks.”
Wei-Long hustled over. “You’re right! And rice grains scattered around. Odd.”
As they followed the trail of clues, Fu Bao found herself enjoying the challenge. For once, she wasn’t dwelling on what she’d left behind. As she curiously discovered each new climate-controlled platform, each new elm and pine tree, and yes, even each new camera monitoring system, she saw her new home with fresh eyes.
Finally, their search led to a pile of stacked logs, part of a climbing gym. Fu Bao expertly began lifting the logs off one by one. Wei-Long looked at her inquisitively, “How?”
“Psuedo-thumb, my second superpower,” she glowed. “My first? My nose, and it smells like… a rat?”
Indeed, a young, scrawny rat poked his head out, whiskers trembling. Wei-Long’s acorn cap sat in its paws.
The rat, whose name was John-Wayne, explained how he had left the streets to make a new home here. “I saw the acorn cap, h…how it could be a bowl for my rice grains. I didn’t think it was important,” he lamented.
Wei-Long’s anger evaporated away. “I get it. New places are scary and confusing.” Fu Bao nodded. “We’re all new here; perhaps we can help each other?”
John-Wayne’s eyes twinkled. “Really? You’d be friends with a rat? I don’t even belong here!”
“Why not?” Fu Bao chuckled. “The truth is, none of us belong here! We might as well settle into our new home together.”
The soft maroon sun announced evening was near. Wei-Long carefully collected evening dew in his acorn cap, used it to wet his claws, and then meticulously demonstrated a grooming ritual from memory to his new friends.
“You know,” Fu Bao mused, “when I cam here, I hated it and felt everything was a disaster. And I still terribly miss my home. But now…”
Wei-Long and John-Wayne looked up and met her eyes as she paused.
“Now, I realize I’ve found true friends who understand me. My journey was worth it,” Fu Bao concluded.
Wei-Long’s tail flapped in agreement, and John-Wayne nodded vigorously, whiskers trailing behind. “Fu Bao, you are right that none of us belong here,” Wei-Long reflected, “but we do belong to each other, and that is home.”
As night began to fall, so did Fu Bao’s eyelids. Solving puzzles, making friends, and finding new connections, as well as nostalgic memories of her old forest and Tang Wei whirled in her head. And what was this? For the first time in a long while, a smile pulled at her mouth as she drifted off to sleep. With Wei-Long and John-Wayne by her side, Fu Bao thought of the next curious mystery to tackle tomorrow: who were whose perplexing, smiling children, watching them from behind thick laminated glass?
Written by Matthew
