Apparently I am touring the nation seeing Pandas. I didn't realize this at the time, but for whatever reason, I felt a disturbingly strong need to visit a Panda while I was in San Diego. So far, Gaia and I have seen three of the nation's 11 pandas.

• Last year at the National Zoo Gaia and I saw Mei Xiang and Tian Tain.
• This year at the San Diego Zoo we saw Gao Gao. Bai Yun was hiding out around back, so we missed her and we did not see Yun Zi.
• We still need to get to the Memphis Zoo to see Ya Ya and Le Le. (Note that Ya Ya and Le Lee do not yet meet the standards of notoriety as estaplished by the watchmen of the Great Wiki.)
• And to Zoo Atlanta to see Lun Lun Xi Lan, Po and Yang Yang.

Considering there are only four zoos in The United States that have pandas, I think that's pretty good for a thing I didn't know I was doing. If I tried harder, I could probably have seen a few more.

And, it's worth noting: Panda's are cool and all, but there are rarer animals. Seeing two of the seven remaining Northern White Rhinoceros on the planet is something that although Gaia doesn't see as significant now, but I hope one day she realizes that she has beheld the last remaining wonders of a once great species as it quietly rested in a mud puddle.

It's not her fault, really. The zoo, as great as even the San Diego Safari Park is, is about the worst place you can go to commune with an animal. It is, sadly, a sobering fact about these trips to the world's greatest zoos, that people, in general, do not care about nature or animals nearly as much as they care about free-refills and giant, ugly-ass yellow balloons.