I am not sure if I am allowed to have a favorite chapter. But, just between you and I, it has to be the one about Appalachian pandas.
It was great fun to write, its short 18 pages cover roughly 4 to 7 million years. Along the way I met Dr. Steven Wallace at the Gray Fossil Site and Sarah Glass red panda curator at Zoo Knoxville. I also learned the story of Spandeau and Wicket—the two young pandas above—from Karen Webster, small mammal keeper at the Knoxville Zoo at the time. She took care of them when they were both cute young cubs.
“Back then, I knew I had a special job. I’d drive to work thinking, wow, no one in Tennessee is going to work right now to feed red pandas,” recalled Webster. “They’d see me coming up the trail and start pacing back and forth. They’d be manic by the time I opened up to feed them. I’d go in rain, snow, or sleet to take care of them."
Spandeau, one week old August 1987
Webster feeding Spandeau, 1987
Wicket with animal tech Carol Newsom, 1987
Gray Fossil Site, 2016
My sister, Darlene Brett in front of dig site, 2016
Dr. Steven Wallace inside Gray museum, 2016
Exhibit of Appalachian panda skeleton
Skull of ancestral panda compared to modern day red panda
Bristol's Appalachian panda skull and other fossilized bones
Dr. Steven Wallace with two panda femurs
Zoo Knoxville's Sarah Glass, curator of red pandas, with Ijams' Lauren Bird, 2016
Red panda named Lincoln, 2016
Glass feeding Lincoln, 2016
Ijams' Lauren Bird feeding Lincoln, 2016
Author feeding Lincoln, 2016
Sarah Glass with
Wicket's family tree
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