Vanessa's Journal

Jan. 23, 2010

Seeing red

I think I called it with the last journal entry! Folks, we now have our first official trap closure of this season! This morning I went out to check the trap transmitter signals soon after the sun came up and I was surprised to discover that one of the traps had been tripped. We had finally caught an animal after about 10 days since opening the traps! The question was, what animal had we caught?

Certainly, the eternal optimist inside of me really wanted to believe that we had accomplished the unthinkable and trapped a giant panda. After eating breakfast in record time and setting out eagerly anticipating the sight of an animal inside one of our traps, I reflected upon our trapping season thus far and how much time had transpired since the beginning of this journey. I wanted so much for this to be “the day,” but alas, it was not to be.

It turns out that we opened up the trap door in question to find none other than one of my red panda friends! This red panda had likely been in the trap since the night before, since it had eaten every scrap of meat that we had left for bait inside. This animal was also not very happy with the whole situation and made his or her anger known by emitting a number of loud “barking” sounds. Something tells me that this red panda will not be back for seconds.

It was a thrill to see one of the red pandas in person once again and to watch such a unique and vibrant personality be expressed right before my eyes. We immediately opened the trap for the red panda to run free, but it was nonetheless scared of our loud and strange voices. After a few awkward moments where he or she was questioning what to do in this odd predicament, the red panda ran out of the trap at the first sight of sunshine and was off down the mountain without ever looking back. And that was the end of our brief, but thrilling red panda encounter.

Come to find out, the other team of our researchers that had gone out to check two other traps that day had, by no coincidence, run onto not one, but two red pandas that were wandering the mountains. We all stopped to appreciate the fact that it is now the red panda mating season, which means the red pandas are all running around the entire trapping area with reckless abandon, searching for mates during an exciting time of year for them.

I shared in their excitement today and felt a great boost in what will be a long and unpredictable trapping season. The red pandas always seem to keep me going whenever a feeling of discouragement sets in, and this year is no exception. I only hope that the red pandas continue to enjoy the meat that we put out with minimal disruption to their daily lives and that one of these days, we may just come upon a closed trap and peek inside to find the figure of our ever-coveted giant panda.