Sandie Black first saw giant pandas at the Calgary Zoo in 1988 when she applied for a job with the veterinary staff. Fast-forward 30 years, Black is now tasked with caring for a family of the iconic black and white bears who will call the Calgary Zoo home for the next five years.
“They were here when I first applied for the job but were gone by the time I started,” says Black, now the head of veterinary services at the zoo and a clinical associate professor of zoo and wildlife medicine with the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (UCVM).
A family of giant pandas — adults Er Shun and Da Mao and cubs Ji Panpan and Jia Yueyue — have arrived from the Toronto Zoo and are set to officially greet the Calgary public on May 7. The pandas have been at the zoo for almost a month and a half getting acclimatized to their new surroundings, and by all accounts, the staff at the Calgary Zoo have fallen in love with the bamboo-munching mammals, including Black, who says their arrival was well worth the wait.
“They are incredible,” says Black. “We get different animals all the time and it’s always exciting, it’s also part of the job. But when I went to see the pandas I was not expecting to be quite as charmed as I was. There was something about them — they’re characters, their personalities are quite hilarious at times.
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Image via University of Calgary.