From Richard Reynolds

news from Zoo Atlanta. Giant panda Lun Lun has delivered a cub! Lun Lun gave birth on Saturday, August 30 at 10:10pm in a specially-constructed birthing den in the Zoo's giant panda holding building. Both mother and cub appear to be doing well. That gives Atlanta four (4) giant pandas. Yang Yang and Lun Lun from China in 1999, cub Mei Lan born in 2006 and now this one. Altogether there are now thirteen (13) in USA - - - - four each in Atlanta and San Diego, 3 in Washington (National zoo), and 2 in Memphis. In, let's say, 1958, had anyone told me there would be giant pandas in the Atlanta zoo during my lifetime I'd have suggested that they be committed for psychiatric study. For beginners, back then the USA had no relations whatever with the Communist China of Mao Zedung (spelled Tse-tung back then). That year (1958) the Austrian animal collector/dealer Heini Demmer had managed to trade 2 giraffes, 2 rhinos, 2 hippos, and 2 zebras to the Chinese ( for the Beijing Zoo - -spelled Peking back then). He shipped them from his station in Kenya. In return he got a lone female giant panda named Chi Chi. Chi Chi was supposed to be sold by Demmer to the Brookfield zoo for a huge sum. But the US Treasury Department banned the transaction because it ran afoul of the embargo on all trade with Communist China and the Dept. would not allow an exception even for a beloved giant panda. So after being shown by Demmer on a temporary basis during the summer of 1958 in the zoos in Berlin and Frankfurt/Main, Germany and Copenhagen, Denmark, Chi Chi was placed in the London Zoo in September 1958 and eventually purchased by the zoo. She lived there until her death in 1972. Chi Chi was the first giant panda shown outside the so-called Iron and Bamboo Curtains since male Mei Lan died in Brookfield zoo in 1953 (Note that the first Atlanta cub was given the same name, quite by accident as it happened). Richard Reynolds