Beer and Pandas Don't Mix

[giza]

BEIJING, China (AP) -- A drunken Chinese tourist bit a panda at the Beijing Zoo after the animal attacked him when he jumped into the enclosure and tried to hug it, state media said Wednesday.

Zhang Xinyan had drunk four pitchers of beer at a restaurant before "stumbling to the zoo" nearby and stopping off at the pen holding a sleeping 6-year-old male panda, Gu Gu, on Tuesday, the Beijing Morning Post said.

"He felt a sudden urge to touch the panda with his hand" and jumped over a waist-high railing down into the enclosure, the newspaper said. "When he got closer and was undiscovered, he reached out to hug it."

Startled, Gu Gu bit Zhang in the right leg, it said. Zhang, a 35-year-old migrant laborer from central Henan province, got angry and kicked the panda, who then bit his other leg. A tussle ensued, the paper said.

"I bit the fellow in the back," Zhang was quoted as saying in the newspaper. "Its skin was quite thick."

The full story is on CNN.

Comments

[erastmus.livejournal.com]

Hmm.. what's alarming is what the zoo spokeswoman said about it..

Ye Mingxia, a spokeswoman for the Beijing Zoo, confirmed the incident happened but would not give any details. She said Gu Gu was "healthy and uninjured."
"We're not considering punishing him now," Ye said in a telephone interview. "He's suffered quite a bit of shock."

Why even consider to punish an animal who's just trying to defend himself from a beer-smelling staggering guy who wants to steal a hug? Heck, I'd bit him myself.

[unciaa.livejournal.com]

If you don't put them down right away you run the risk of HUMAN EATING PANDAS! Now that Gu Gu has tasted human flesh he will no longer be satisfied with mere vegetation, oh no... he craves the sweet, sweet flesh of humans.

More specifically, Chinese. I hear they're delicious; can't blame the pandas, really.

[just-the-ash.livejournal.com]

I'd be really pissed off too if my name were Gu Gu.