Vanessa's Journal

Feb. 14

Today I checked traps with Lao Fan.  It was good to get out there again.  It was a nice day out and we had an enjoyable hike.  There wasn’t too much excitement that is worthy of reporting, but we did find some bloody red panda footprints near the Yaopengzi trap. It is likely that there were two red pandas fighting over access to the meat. I’m afraid we may have created a bunch of greedy meat fanatics.  It was a very small amount of blood, so I think it is a tantamount to a small cut on the paw perhaps and not much more. But still, I hope we are not unknowingly inciting a red panda war up there. Actually, the red panda mating season is January and February, so that helps explain the flurry of activity that we have seen in the red pandas at Wuyipeng lately. It is of course possible that the red pandas were fighting over a mate, as both red and giant pandas do during their respective mating seasons. I have heard accounts of giant pandas getting injured during such fights. However, in this case, the red panda footprints were so close to the meat that it seems likely that it was a meat-related fight.  We will keep watch of the situation over there. I hope everyone behaves themselves because there really should be plenty of meat to go around.