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What’s black and white and full of birthday cake? The National Zoo’s Bao Li, who celebrated his fourth birthday Monday in D.C. with dozens of adoring fans watching.
The crowd gave muffled gasps, chuckles and “awws” as Bao Li dug into his multi-colored frozen fruit cake.
“But he definitely passes cake because he went right to it. So we give him a passing grade on that,” joked Cyndy Taylor, a local first-grade teacher and panda enthusiast.
“The zoo did a great job, like they always do, the ice cake, the fruit, the signs they made for him,” said Karen Wille, a long-time panda fan and conservation advocate.
One of those signs read, “Roar I’m Four” and had Bao Li dressed in a tiger costume.
The young male is one of four pandas living in the U.S. He arrived in October of last year with Qing Bao. They made their long-awaited debut in January.
“He likes to kind of show off a little bit,” Ross Poquette told WTOP about Bao Li. “He’s already kind of getting comfortable with this new environment and starting to show it playing around.”
Poquette flew to D.C. from Boston to visit the pandas on Bao Li’s first birthday celebration on U.S. soil. But he made another trip with his wife earlier this year to visit Bao Li’s family in their natural habitat.
“If you ever get a chance to go to China and see where they’re born and where their natural habitat is, it’s great there,” he said.
Wille hopes these popular events celebrating the pandas will inspire other enthusiasts to get involved with their conservation.
“They’re cute, they’re fluffy, they’re all those things,” she told WTOP’s Luke Lukert. “And it’s wonderful if that gets people here, but we also want people to think about the fact that they were endangered for a long time. They’re vulnerable now, but we can never let our guard down.”
If you didn’t get to see Bao Li’s birthday, Qing Bao will be turning 4 years old next month.
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