it’s time for a change,” suggested Ping. “Maybe I wasn’t born to pose for the endless stream of visitors who pass by every day with their cameras. Maybe I am destined to be the first panda in the history of Wolagong who was born to lead a life of excitement and adventure! I have been speaking to my friend Hui and—”
An interrupted him.
“Hui is just a birdbrain,” she said dismissively. “I don’t believe anything he says either.”
“Hui is a grandala bird, who travels the world and knows everything,” Ping corrected her. “And he says that the world is full of interesting animals just waiting to meet me.”
His mother lay back down and contemplated the sky.
“It is enough that water is wet,” she said meaningfully. “It cannot also be fire.”
Ping sighed. His mother was fond of her irritating little sayings. She had a habit of slipping them into a conversation when she wanted the conversation to stop. Deep down Ping knew that she was right. A panda was a panda and he shouldn’t try to be something else. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t dream, did it?
Moving away from his mother and sister, Ping sat down out of their sight and picked up a handful of the bamboo stalks that he’d knocked over earlier when he’d tumbled through the hedge. He was just taking his first bite when there was a scampering and a chattering behind him, and before he could say, ‘What on Wolagong!’ he was surrounded by an excitable troop of golden monkeys.
“What do you want?” he said, knowing full well what the monkeys wanted – what monkeys always wanted. To tease him. Pandas are quiet, contemplative creatures that like to think deeply, but golden monkeys are noisy chatterboxes interested only in tittle-tattle and gossip. In short, monkeys are trouble.
“Hello, Ping,” mocked their leader, Choo. “Having another busy day?”
The other monkeys sniggered at their leader’s brilliant wit.
“Been eating lots of bamboo, have you? Had a few poos? Posed for some cameras?”
The sniggering increased to such a volume that Ping felt the need to defend himself.
“Actually, yes,” he said, bigging himself up. “I have had an extremely busy day, thank you, Choo. Some might even say a heroic day!”
The monkeys gasped and exchanged looks of mock admiration.
“I saw one of the visitors trying to steal a golden pheasant,” Ping continued, “and when I realised that there wasn’t time to call a ranger and that I was the bird’s only hope, I took a deep breath and grabbed on to a creeper and swung through the trees like a stealthy shadow until I was hanging over the top of the villainous visitor. I must have been at least ten metres above his head. Probably more. Anyway, without any thought for my own safety, I let go of the creeper and bravely dropped on to his head, driving the visitor into the ground like a fence post. And after he’d pulled himself out and run away screaming, the golden pheasant put its wing on my shoulder and said, ‘Truly, Ping, you are a great hero. You have saved my life when nobody else could. And if we had a king here in the Wolagong Nature Reserve, you can bet that I’d put you up for the job because you are the best.’ And that’s how I’ve spent my day!”
At the very least Ping was expecting a pat on the back accompanied by a shame-faced apology, but instead, when he turned around, the monkeys were rolling on the ground clutching their bellies and laughing.
“You are such a fibber!” Choo screamed, leaping up into a tree and swinging back into the forest. “The lousiest liar in Wolagong.”
In a trice the other monkeys followed their leader into the trees and Ping was suddenly alone with only the echoes of their cruel laughter to keep him company.
The young panda cub slumped to the ground and rested his chin in his paw as he mulled over his life.
“I hate it when the monkeys are right,” he told himself. “Being a panda IS really dull.”
He felt his mother’s paw stroke the top of his head.
“Do not fear going forward slowly. Fear only standing still,” she said, giving his shoulder a squeeze.
“Actually there’s another saying that’s much more appropriate,” Ping said.
“Really?” she replied. “I’d love to hear it.”
“Do not fear going forward looking like a doodoo-headed ninnyhammer. Fear only being a doodoo-headed ninnyhammer,” he said.
“And is that what you think you are?” his mother asked. “A doodoo-headed ninnyhammer?”
Ping turned and stared at her through black-ringed eyes and couldn’t find a way of saying ‘Yes’ without sounding sorry for himself. Instead he said, “I’m going to bed,” and trotted away with his tiny tail between his legs.
But he couldn’t sleep.
As he tossed and turned on his bed of rhododendron leaves, the long, cold night carved out the truth. His life was standing still. If he didn’t do something exciting soon, he would almost certainly turn into a stone.
But, that night, as luck would have it, his wish for excitement was granted.
Flashing a look across the clearing, he was alarmed to see that both his mother and sister were asleep in their beds. So it wasn’t them he could hear creeping up on him… in the dead of night… breathing. He could definitely hear breathing. The low rumble of a big cat’s purr.
Ping sat up, his heart pounding like the rat-tat-tat of a Chinese woodpecker. A big cat could only mean one thing.
A snow leopard! A gizzard-guzzling, meat-munching, sinew-slashing snow leopard! And snow leopards ate panda cubs for breakfast every day of the week!
Well, not today. Not if Ping had anything to do with it…
He rolled out of bed as silently as a slithering moon-shadow and sprang to his feet, pushing himself up on to the very tips of his tippy-toes. Then treading as delicately as a mountain shrew, he pushed his way into the field of bamboo and circled round to his right.
His plan was simple. He would creep up behind the snow leopard and take it by surprise. Brilliant. What was it his mother always said? “There is nothing to fear except fear itself.” Ping wasn’t scared. Far from it. He was pumped up to his eyeballs with courage. Then, suddenly, there in front of him, he saw his target: a black-and-white-spotted shape flickering through gaps in the bamboo screen and slinking towards the clearing where his mother and sister were asleep. They would be breakfast unless Ping could save them.
Standing on his back legs, he
