Lady Panda Risking Her Life to Save Her Baby
On another occasion, we went upstream a river, and at the very end we found a baby giant panda playing near the edge of a pond beneath the waterfall. Having decided to take the baby panda back to the lab, we went in two directions to encircle and outflank it. Upon the first sight of us, it hastily hid itself to and fro. In the end, it was cornered towards the pond by our pursuit. The baby panda would funk the pond water, as I considered. It would fall to our hand as long as its mother, the giant lady panda remained out of sight. All of a sudden, we heard a yowl. Our sight was drawn towards the mountain crest above the waterfall where the giant lady panda was standing and glaring at us. The waterfall was from a height of 30 meters or so surrounded by abrupt cliffs. Amid the pond rested huge rocks. She would certainly be killed if she came by falling from the crest. If descending along the mountain trail, it would take her too long a way to come to her baby's rescue, when we would have been on our way back with her baby.
The baby panda seemed to have caught a signal at its mother's yowl. It swiftly climbed onto the tree near the stream. This appeared nothing unusual to us at all. When we were just about to climb that tree, we heard a bang and saw the giant lady panda jumped off the crest, into the air and plunged into the pond followed by a loud splash. The giant lady panda disappeared in the depth of the pond for a moment and emerged. She was then washed ashore. She rested her head on a rock without further move. No animal, however able-bodied, would be able to survive a plunge from such a height. We were silent, worrying this giant lady panda would probably be dying. I was caught with shame and sorrow – had we known that the giant lady panda was keeping her offspring so dearly, we would not have included the giant panda into our research program.
It was getting dark, and we were still focused on the giant lady panda – hoping her to move a bit. We waited for long before she finally began to move. I burst into tears when I found her survived. She simply swayed her head and strived to move her forepaws. She managed to raise her body by every effort, but fell immediately, as her back was too weak to support her body. Such was repeated some times before she finally rose firmly to her paws. On seeing this, the baby panda slid from the tree and came to her mother's side rubbing and humming, apparently naughty and comforting its mother.
This was not long before the giant lady panda led her baby away with firm footsteps.
Next story : To be continued