An Orgy of Grooming and a Bouquet of Ears

[one of the red panda cubs]

Once again the week has gotten away from me, and I haven’t had time to write up my observations about the red pandas—or anything else. But I have soo many pictures of these guys that I couldn’t put them all in a single post anyway—so today I will simply share with you some photos from another moment with the red panda mother and cubs.

Their mother frequently becomes convinced that, in the past half an hour or so, one or both of her cubs has become unbearably filthy, and so she’s going to groom them back to respectability, whether they like it or not.

["Mo-oooom!"]

At one point, as the mother began grooming a cub, the other cub apparently decided that she could be a groomer, too—so she clumsily scrambled onto her mother’s back...

...and thus began a veritable orgy of grooming:

Eventually one of the cubs tired of the exercise and extracted herself, but she stayed close enough to her sister and mother to form part of an amazing collection of fuzzy white ears—more ears, it seemed at the time, than there were red pandas.

They really are cuter than any animal has a right to be.

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}