Baby Panda Born at National Zoo

This week, there was a baby giant panda born at the National Zoo in Washington.  Baby pandas are always considered miracles because of how endangered the species is and how difficult it is for them to procreate; apparently female pandas are only fertile for a few days a year, making conception and eventual birth unlikely at best.  So this baby panda cub was big news, particularly on morning television, which I watch while getting ready for work.  Matt Lauer and The Today Show crew spent a ton of time fixating on it.  The panda, whose gender has not yet been determined, was teeny, tiny, and sort of rat looking.  But in a few weeks, I'm sure he/she will a ball of furry cuteness.

The National Zoo's new baby panda cub at three days old.
Not yet super cute.  Courtney Janney/NZP/National Zoo

This story would have been great news for Ryan.  Because Ryan, my military historian husband who wrote his dissertation on chemical weaponry in World War I, ADORED cute, furry little animals.

This was something I found out about him prior to our first date, when I worked with him at Borders, and then became a defining feature of our relationship.  It was one of the little Ryan things that made me love him, and that maybe not everyone knew.  I think it started with his own family dog, Lucy, who joined his family as a puppy, and extended to just about any other mammal you could think of.  I think a lot of it came from his intellectual fascination with animals, the way they moved, the things they did.  For example, he loved that Lucy would turn her head when you said her name because she wanted to hear better what you had to say, and the way that she would go through the same routine every time she got out of her bed (stand up, stretch her front legs, stretch her backs legs one at a time, shake her whole body, finishing with the tail, stand there wagging her tail at you).  He loved watching my brother's cat staling in the tall grass, or squirrels running around looking for nuts.  He could get hours of entertainment out of this.

Baby polar bear- the kinds of picture
Ryan would make me look at with
him when we were bored.

Television and the internet of course helped feed the addiction.  Many mornings in the summer Ryan would put on Animal Planet and watch a show called Big Cat Diary, which followed families of cheetahs, lions and leopards in Kenya.  Sometimes before bed he would start looking up videos of baby cheetahs roaring (you should check that one out, it's pretty awesome), or pictures of baby polar bears, or videos of Jack Russell Terrier puppies playing.  And I can't tell  you the number of times that Ryan would yell at me from the basement "quick, Kate, hurry up, you have to see this!!" Then I'd come running down the stairs, nearly falling and breaking my neck, just to find out that there was an adorable wolf cub on television that Ryan couldn't let me miss.  Ryan did goofy little impressions of the animals too; sometimes in the morning when I was putting on my makeup, he'd show up behind me in the mirror, and perch his head and fists on my shoulders and make a cute little face.  Like a little mouse.

So when the baby panda was born last week, despite the little miracle that he/she was, I was a little heartbroken.  Ryan could have taken a thing like a baby panda and gotten weeks of material out of it.  The story probably would have made his morning, and then we would have had to look at pictures of baby pandas, and he'd have looked up a bunch of panda facts, and we'd have talked about that time at the Berlin Zoo when we saw a giant panda at feeding time.  He did a great impression of the panda eating a carrot.  I miss that every day Ryan stuff more than I have words for.  These little Ryan quirks brightened my days. Thinking about it now makes me smile, and then ache. The happiest memories can cause the most pain, because I'll never have them again.  There are no pictures of Ryan making his little mouse face, and I'll never again hear the excitement in his voice when a baby polar bear shows up on TV.

Baby girl's nursery friends.

Ryan's love for animals is something I plan on sharing with our daughter. When we found out about the baby, we decided not to find out the gender.  When I thought about what we would register for in the way of nursery decor, we agreed on gender neutral jungle animals.  To keep with that,  found a great nursery set with monkeys and giraffes.  I got a little stuffed polar bear for her, and am sticking with the animal motif in clothing.  Ryan and I had planned many trips to the zoo with our family- I still plan to bring her once she's old enough.  I hope she likes them too, and her fascination with animals will help to remind me of his.