Giant panda Bao Bao at the Smithsonian's National Zoo climbs a tree on Thursday morning at a dumpling party for her departure to China on Feb 21. (Photo by Chen Weihua/China Daily)
Bao Bao will be accompanied by a panda keeper and a veterinarian, plus some of her favorite foods, such as bamboo, sweet potatoes, apples and biscuits.
"She will probably just be resting, doing her normal routine — eating, drinking and sleeping," Brown-Palsgrove said.
While some news reports said that giant pandas returning to China from Zoo Atlanta had encountered language barriers, keeper Stacey Tabellario at the National Zoo said it should not be a big problem for Bao Bao because the hand signals used by her and her colleagues will be the same as those in China.
Online, the zoo has been sharing a Best of Bao Bao video, which shows her fun moments of looking like a stick of butter, her naming ceremony, her rolling down the snow in the yard and climbing on an ice cake on her first birthday.
Keepers also shared their favorite memories online. The dumpling partygoers on Thursday morning were lucky.
"On Christmas Eve in 2014, Bao Bao climbed a tree and did not come down when called, so I stayed late. I expected that I would have to stay well into the next day, but just before midnight, Bao Bao made her way down the tree and into the Panda House. It was our own Christmas miracle," wrote keeper Shellie Pick.
Besides Washington, giant pandas are also housed in three other U.S. zoos, in San Diego, Atlanta and Memphis, Tennessee.
