Panda Panic

by Jamie Rix

  “Bravery?” said Ping. “Please tell me it wasn’t Gao who came to my rescue when I wiped out on the big wave?”

  “No. Gao was far too busy elsewhere to save you,” said Hui. “He was rescuing the rangers’ hats after they’d been swept away by the water.”

  Ping groaned.

  “I should have known that Gao would end up being the hero,” he said gloomily. “I’m the one who takes the risks and he’s the one they send to Australia.”

  “Be not jealous of another man’s talent,” his mother said, “lest that jealousy devours your own talent instead.”

  “Ping doesn’t have a talent,” smirked An. “Unless you count having a talent for being talentless!”

  “I’m not jealous of Gao,” Ping said indignantly, “but it’s not fair if the only reason he gets to travel the world is because he’s cute.”

  At that moment, the veterinarian entered the room. He was carrying a clipboard and writing something down on a piece of paper.

  “Right, Ping,” he said, “you can go home now. But do try to take a little more care in future.”

  Ping leaped out of bed like an over-eager jack-in-a-box.

  “What excellent timing,” declared Hui. “Let’s get out of here, Ping. I’ve got something rather interesting to tell you.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  T

  he first thing Ping vowed to do when he left the doctor was never to return, but so exciting was Hui’s news that this vow was instantly forgotten.

  “While I was in the hut watching Gao being given an extra ration of bamboo for saving the rangers’ hats—”

  “I bet they rewarded him with a ticket to Australia as well,” Ping grumbled.

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” squawked the grandala bird. “I saw a chart on the tall ranger’s clipboard. It said “Panda Exchange Program” and underneath there was a list of countries from all around the world—England, Australia, Austria, Scotland, Spain, and Thailand. And each country had a check next to it.”

  “What about names?” asked Ping, sounding a bit more interested. “Was the name “Ping” on the board next to one of the countries?”

  “No,” said the bird. “Just checks.”

  Ping looked disappointed. The light went out in his big black eyes again as the hope of an adventure went up in smoke.

  “It’s not a bad thing,” said Hui encouragingly. “It means that a panda exchange is going to take place with that country, but they haven’t decided which panda to send yet.”

  “So… I still have a chance?” Ping asked hopefully, raising his head.

  “I don’t see why not,” said Hui.

  “What were the names of those other countries again?”

  “Austria, Scotland, Spain, and Thailand,” came Hui’s reply. “Why?”

  “Because I’ve got four very important letters to write!” Ping shrieked. And despite being sore from his recent escapade, he allowed himself a jink, a jig, two jaunty jumps, and a belly-wobbling hip-wiggle. A life of travel and excitement was still there for the taking!

  But this time Ping had to get a move on. With four letters to write, he didn’t have time for small talk. He had to get to the point and leave the giant pandas who were reading his words in no doubt that he, Ping, was the one and only panda in the world that they simply HAD to meet.

  In order to keep things brief, Ping decided to send postcards instead of letters, and Hui happily agreed because postcards were lighter and less tiring to deliver. Then they set about their task.

  After Hui had told Ping everything he knew about Austria, Scotland, Spain, and Thailand, Ping wrote the cards in double-quick time and Hui’s Bird Mail scattered them to the four corners of the earth.

  But days passed and no replies came.

  “The letters won’t arrive any quicker if you worry, Ping,” said his mother for the millionth time, as she caught Ping gazing anxiously up at the clouds again.

  “I’m not worrying,” he replied.

  “Yes, you are,” his sister chirped in as she relaxed on the ground with her legs in the air, munching on a stick of bamboo. “There’s a tremendous air of tension around you, Ping, that’s ruining my appetite.”

  “It doesn’t look that way,” Ping said. “You look positively content! I’ve never seen anyone as laid back as you while they were eating.”

  “Never hurry a curry,” his mother slipped into the conversation.

  “But it’s not a curry, is it?” Ping pointed out. “She’s eating a stick of bamboo.”

  “OK, then,” his mother countered. “Never rush through a stick of bamboo!”

  Then at last, nine days later, the first reply arrived. It was from a giant panda named Viveka who lived in Vienna, Austria. Ping learned:

  Skiing! Now that was a sport fit for pandas. It took Ping two days to chisel out his bamboo skis and then three days to trudge to the snow-capped peak of Mount Tranquil with them tied to his back. All this did was delay his return to the veterinarian’s office by five days. For at first light on the morning of the sixth day, he strapped the skis to his feet and with a cry of “Hupzekneesundboompsadaisy!” he launched himself off the peak.

  It took him less than eight seconds to reach a cruising speed of a hundred miles an hour—and one second more to hit the tree.

  Ping lay in the snow, waiting for the ambulance to show up, and mentally crossed Austria off the list.

  After a sleepover at the veterinarian’s, Ping went home to discover that a second reply had arrived. He found it in his sister’s mouth.

  “What are you doing?” he cried as he tugged the message from between her teeth.

  “I’m trying to eat it,” she said. “I don’t want you to get hurt again.”

  The postcard was from a giant panda called Hamish, who lived in Scotland. It told him:

  After Hui had explained that a caber was a tree trunk, and had employed a family of woodpeckers to chop down a tree and strip off the branches, Ping tried to lift it up. He wrapped his arms around the wood and strained, and heaved, and puffed, and finally dropped to the floor with a cramp.

  His sister, who had come along to watch, let out a small laugh.

  “You can’t even lift it, let alone toss it,” she said. “Say goodbye to Scotland, Ping. Stay here in Wolagong where you belong.”

  “I will not be defeated,” her brother wheezed from the floor. “I need to build up my strength before I can tackle the whole tree. I need to start by tossing smaller things.”

  Being a twin, An understood what her brother meant before the words were even out of his mouth. She tried to run, but Ping was too quick.

  “No!” she cried as he grabbed her by the legs. “I don’t want to be a caber.”

  “Don’t be such a baby,” he said. “It won’t hurt.”

  But it did.

  An was fine, but Ping pulled a muscle in his back and spent another night at the veterinarian’s.

  Luckily, the third postcard arrived just as he was feeling better. It was a short one from Spain, in which a panda named Manuel recommended that Ping become a bullfighter to increase his chances of being sent to Madrid.

  Obviously there were no bulls in the Wolagong Nature Reserve, but by persuading three monkeys to sit on each other’s shoulders and charge at him with sharpened bamboo poles, Ping was able to practice his bullfighting moves using a cape made from bamboo leaves.

  Unfortunately, he had forgotten that the monkeys were still angry about his rolling-rock-river-ant-nest trick, and the moment he turned his back, they leaped down and kicked his bottom.

  This time when Ping emerged from the doctor, he was walking rather gingerly and carrying a cushion to sit on.

  “I know something that will put a smile on your face,” squawked Hui, holding out the fourth reply. “I’ve got another postcard.”

  Despite his bruised bottom, Ping’s enthusiasm for a life of adventure remained as strong as ever, and he read the letter with a glint in his eye. It wa
s from Thailand, from a panda named Nattapong.

  So Ping threw himself into kickboxing training, with Hui as his coach. Every day for a week, he got up before dawn and as the sun rose, he shadowboxed with shadows, wrestled with rocks, kicked down fields of bamboo, and punched a punching bag made from a hollowed-out gourd.

  And in that week he was injured only once, when the punching bag swung back, hit him in the face, and gave him two black eyes.

  Luckily, when his mother came to visit him at the veterinarian’s for the sixth time, she didn’t notice the black eyes because a panda’s eyes are black all the time.

  It was Hui who broke the bad news while Ping lay stretched out on his hospital bed with a bag of ice on his forehead.

  “I’m afraid the chart hasn’t changed,” he said. “Your name still isn’t on it.”

  “So I’m not going anywhere?” Ping sighed, wondering what he had to do to get noticed. “After all my efforts to get away, I’ve ended up exactly where I started.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with staying in one place,” said his mother, who was sitting on the other side of the bed. “There’s no place like home, Ping. Be happy with your lot, and remember—The tiger who never stops chasing his tail eventually turns into butter.”

  Mao Mao’s voice drifted off into a bank of sleepy clouds as Ping closed his eyes. Maybe his mother was right. Maybe it was time to stop dreaming of a life full of adventure and start learning to live with what he had. After all, it had to be better than spending his life in the hospital.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A

  week later, Ping was lying in a clearing far away from his usual patch, chewing on a bamboo leaf. He was on a stakeout—hiding behind a clump of tall grass and spying on his rival, Gao, while he went about his daily business.

  It was both a surprise and a relief to see that Gao was still on the reserve and wasn’t showing any signs of leaving soon. Ping had expected to find him packing his bags, ready for the big flight out of there, but that was clearly not the case.

  This left Ping rather baffled. If neither he nor Gao were being sent abroad as part of the panda exchange, who was?

  A squawk from above disturbed his thoughts. Ping looked up just as Hui flew down and parked his brightly colored feathers beside him.

  “You are hard to find, my friend,” the grandala bird said.

  “I don’t want people to see me,” Ping replied. “To tell the truth, I feel rather stupid, Hui. I tried to learn all those impressive skills and I failed at each and every one of them.”

  Ping was surprised to see Hui blush. For a brief moment his blue face seemed to turn red.

  “Actually,” Hui said sheepishly, “I think it’s me who failed. I was in the tall ranger’s hut last night and heard him explaining how the panda exchange program is going to work…and I think I may have made a teeny tiny mistake.”

  “What do you mean, mistake?” Ping wasn’t sure if he wanted to hear this.

  “Those checks on that chart on the clipboard…”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, obviously, they still mean exactly what I said…I got that part right. Those are the countries that the exchange will take place with. But that’s as far as me being right went, I’m afraid. Instead of pandas from Wolagong going overseas, pandas from England, Australia, Austria, Scotland, Spain, and Thailand are coming here!”

  It took a moment for the news to sink in.

  “You mean, all those pandas I wrote to are visiting us?” gasped Ping.

  “All of them,” squawked Hui excitedly. “Tomorrow, there’s going to be a great big Panda Party here in Wolagong!”

  “Tomorrow?”

  Hui waited for Ping to share his excitement, but Ping just looked horrified, as if he’d been caught doing something really naughty.

  “Tell me you’re teasing,” he whimpered. “Tell me this is all a bad dream.”

  “Why?” said Hui. “I thought you’d be pleased.”

  “But you don’t know what I’ve done,” quivered Ping.

  “No, I don’t,” said Hui. “What? Spit it out, Ping, for goodness’ sake!”

  “Well, my letters…” he began falteringly. “I didn’t believe people would think I was interesting, so I may have—what I’m trying to say, Hui, is—that it’s possible that I may have exaggerated a tiny little bit.”

  “Exaggerated what?” screamed Hui.

  “The story of ME!” shouted the panda cub. “What I do. What I am. What I’ve achieved!”

  “But you haven’t achieved anything,” said the grandala bird. “And you don’t do much either, except sleep a lot, eat bamboo, and poo forty-seven times a day.”

  “That’s why I did it,” blurted out Ping, who was as close to tears as Hui had ever seen him. “That’s why I lied.”

  “Stop,” said the bird. “Take a deep breath. These things are never as bad as you imagine them to be. Tell me what you wrote and we’ll decide if there’s a problem.”

  So Ping told Hui what he’d written.

  “Well, first I told London Jack that I could do magic tricks and plate spinning, and then I told Adelaide in Adelaide that I could cook bamboo on a barbecue!”

  “What’s wrong with that?” said Hui.

  “Nothing,” said Ping. “But I should have stopped there because then I told Viveka in Austria that I had the fur for winter sports, which was why I’d been selected for the Winter Olympics team.”

  “OK,” said Hui. “So she thinks you’re a Winter Olympian. That’s not so bad.”

  “It gets worse,” whispered Ping. “When I wrote to Hamish in Scotland I told him that I was half Scottish, which was why I called myself Ping McPing and wore my sister’s skirts!”

  Hui raised an eyebrow in surprise.

  “And I went on to tell him that I was a very famous classical bagpipe player, who played all the classic tunes by all the best classical bagpipe composers—Beethoven, Mozart, and Justin Bieber… I wanted him to ask me over to Glasgow to play, you see.”

  The grandala bird rubbed his beak thoughtfully.

  “Tricky,” he said. “So now they think you’re a plate-spinning, bamboo-cooking, classical bagpipe-playing, Winter Olympian who wears a skirt.”

  “And the truth is, I don’t know any classical music,” squealed Ping.

  “You surprise me,” said the grandala bird. “Do you know any music for bagpipes?”

  “No!” Ping cried, his voice beginning to wobble with nerves. “I don’t even know what a bagpipe looks like!”

  “What’s next?” asked Hui, keen to press on before the panda cub became too upset to speak.

  “Manuel in Spain,” said Ping. “This one was really silly. I told him that there was a sport here in China that requires more courage than bullfighting.”

  “And which sport is that exactly?”

  “Dragon-fighting!” blurted Ping. “I told him I was really good at putting out a dragon’s fiery breath.”

  “And did you tell him how you put out a dragon’s fire?”

  “Yes. I said I stole the fire extinguishers from the tall ranger’s office. I’m in trouble, aren’t I?” trembled the little panda.

  “Not at all,” said Hui, who by now was starting to look every bit as nervous as Ping. “As long as tomorrow, when these pandas visit us, you can pull off being a skirt-wearing, plate-spinning, bamboo-cooking, classical bagpipe-playing, Winter Olympian, who also happens to be a part-time dragon-fighter, I think you’ll be fine.”

  “Is that a joke?” asked the panda.

  “Yes,” replied the bird. “Is that all?”

  “I wish it was,” said Ping, his voice quaking with fear. “My last postcard was sent to Nattapong in Thailand and I think I got a little carried away. I told him that…um…my name was Ping.”

  “But that’s true!”

  “Emperor Ping.”

  Ping gulped nervously and waited for Hui’s verdict.

  “I think it would be fair to say,” concluded Hui,
after much consideration, “that you have stretched the truth further than the length of the tall ranger’s trousers.”

  “I’m not really an Emperor,” said Ping.

  “No. I know,” said Hui dryly.

  Hui walked around the clearing to get things straight in his head. When he returned to Ping’s side he was smiling.

  “Well,” he said, “one thing’s for sure, Ping… that’s some imagination you’ve got there, but I don’t think there’s any harm done. When the other pandas arrive you’ll just have to tell them the truth.”

  “But they’ll think I’m a liar,” Ping cried.

  “You are,” said the straight-talking bird.

  “And none of them will like me,” wailed Ping.

  “I still like you,” said Hui, “and I know the truth.”

  “But you’re different,” Ping said. “I’ve known you all my life.”

  “It will all be fine,” the bird said, putting a comforting wing around Ping’s shoulder. “Trust me.”

  But Ping was not so sure. That his lies should be exposed like this in the cold light of day—what a first-class nincompoop he had been. What on earth was he going to do? There was only one thing.

  CHAPTER NINE

  T

  he next morning, Wolagong Nature Reserve was a hive of activity, but not because the giant pandas were arriving from all over the world for a party. It was because Ping was missing.

  Mao Mao and An were sitting anxiously outside the tall ranger’s office, waiting for news. An leaned her head against her mother’s chest and sobbed hysterically, while Mao Mao gently stroked the fur on the top of her daughter’s head.

  “Do you think he’s dead?” An wailed.

  “No,” said her mother. “The tall ranger knows what he’s doing.”

  “But he can’t look after himself, Mommy. He’s too young. And he’s a boy. We have to find him.”