Why, Pandas? Why??

Pandas need to die. I say this not out of malice. Pandas have never exhibited any kind of hostility toward me, they've never offended my moral sensibilities, they have never wronged me in any way. In fact, Pandas have never done a goddam thing except continuously reinforce the fact they should no longer be alive. It seems to me that nature is doing everything in her power to extinguish the last few miserable little raccoon-eyed bears, and in direct opposition and blatant defiance to the will of mother nature, humans are trying desperately (and most likely in vain) to keep them alive. This process is painful and tedious and I liken it to the plight of modern medicine. Just like we are keeping people alive long beyond when they would normally die were nature to have her way, we are struggling to perpetuate a species the world has clearly given up on and has deemed a monumental waste of time and resources. Humans, not very concerned with what mother nature wants, are apparently blissfully unaware of the fact that species have come and gone throughout the course of Earth's history. Insects, for example, are in a constant state of flux, with entire species dieing out under our noses...not necessarily because we are causing it, but because they got their shot, they didn't give 110%, so nature, in her infinite wisdom and tidying-up skills, struck them from the face of the planet, making room for a stronger, more effective and contributory species. But we don't care about losing insects...no...because insects are not cute. If Pandas had compound eyes that bugged distressingly out of their heads, 6 flailing, multi-jointed legs, cellophane wings, and a proclivity for throwing up on their food before consuming it, I can guarantee we would not be dedicating ourselves so vehemently to rescuing these doomed creatures. Being cute is their ticket to fruitless pursuit for preservation, because they damn sure don't have anything else going for them...lazy bastards. I mean, these animals are so disinterested in keeping themselves alive, they can't even be bothered to reproduce. One of the fundamental and most important acts at which species must succeed in order to survive is procreation. Pandas choose to ignore this. Most organisms on this planet reproduce like there's no tomorrow, unleashing a plethora of offspring in order to ensure at least some percentage of survival (because let's face it, life's a bitch) and the offspring who do survive are stronger than the ones who perished, and, thus, go on to do the same...that Darwin knew what he was talking about. Pandas do not take this approach...they actually don't really take any approach, but I'll go ahead and lay out their reproductive strategy, if you can call it that. First of all, female pandas are only fertile for 2-3 days once a year. So for about 363 days a year, they're basically barren. When those fateful few days do roll around, however, more often than not, the timing isn't synced up, so the mating window is closed almost as quickly as it is opened, or fertilization never even occurs despite copulation because the male, having to mount the female several times to increase the chance of fertilization, just couldn't perform. Strike one. It should not be THAT HARD to make a baby!! This is mother nature gently saying, "I'm not trying to be mean or anything, but I really think you've overstayed your welcome and we just don't really need ya around anymore. So I'm just going to make this painless by cutting off your reproductive efforts and you can live out the rest of your days in peace until your eventual extinction. Really, there's no point in trying too hard with this. Just let it go."
So for the sake of prolonging this panda bashing session, let's say, by sheer luck, a female gets knocked up. She will give birth to one or two cubs. When the babies are born, they are blind and deaf and utterly helpless. As a result, the baby requires every second of the mother's attention
(because the mother was just too uncomfortable or inept to let gestation finish inside the womb) and when i say every second, I mean every second. This means, that if the mother is lucky enough to bear 2 sad little pink blobs, she shows her maternal elation by abandoning one of the cubs so she can give one her undivided attention. The neglected cub dies shortly after birth. This gives whole new meaning to sibling rivalry and child preferential treatment. Wow. Strike two. Not only are these babies underdeveloped and completely dependent when born (dude, baby giraffes fall 6 feet to the ground when they are born and learn to stand and walk IMMEDIATELY thereafter), but if there are two, the mother lets one die...post-partum depression? They should give Brooke Shields a call. So now the mother has to dedicate the next few weeks in isolation to this wormy, overprivileged little succubus. The baby subsists on the mother's milk, if you can call it that. Pandas' diets consist of nothing more than bamboo, which is very low in, well, everything except fiber. You might say, "but if that's all pandas are able to eat and digest, you can't hold that against them!" You'd be wrong...and stupid. I'm the one writing here, so pipe down. Pandas still have the digestive system of a CARNIVORE and do not have the ability to digest cellulose efficiently (Bamboo is mostly cellulose), and thus derive little energy and little protein from consumption of bamboo. Strike three. It's almost as if Pandas are TRYING to kill themselves by not eating what they're supposed to eat! They choose to eat what essentially amounts to big, empty paper towel rolls, instead of opting for that delicious, nutritious, life-giving slab of juicy meat. Maybe they're dissatisfied with the lack of good marinades available in the bamboo forests. Who knows? What I do know, is that this is ridiculous. Anyway, due to the lack of nutritional value in their food of choice, pandas, when they're not too busy NOT mating and NOT contributing to the food chain in any meaningful way with the exception of maybe keeping the bamboo forests in check, spend most of their day eating just to stay alive. So really, they're eating in order to have enough energy to eat. But damn it all, are they REGULAR! Now back to the damn baby. This milk they're unfortunate enough to have to drink, is very poor, and (surprise!) not nutritious, which makes the maturation of the little tyke that much slower. It's no shocker that fewer than 50% of baby pandas survive to adulthood. So if my math is right, and I like to think that it is, (weak babies/crappy milk)+low survival rate=inevitable population decrease and extinction. Then again, even if the little brats reached sexual maturity, it wouldn't really matter all that much because, chances are, they wouldn't make any pathetic little children of their own.
In an effort to remedy this, the humans, with good, albeit misguided, intentions, take the bears into captivity to try to replenish the ever depleting panda population. Ironically, this act does more harm than it does good, because once the pandas are in captivity, whatever little sexual drive they had out there to begin with in the wild completely dies. That is to say, they seem to completely lose interest in the opposite sex and put forth zero effort to mate. Well, shit. This throws a bit of a wrench in our plans to make more panda babies, so zoologists, biologists, and wasting-a-buttload-of-time-money-and-resources-to-
save-these-worthless-panda-ologists have resorted to many odd measures in an effort to increase panda reproduction. These include artificial insemination, showing them videos of pandas mating ("panda porn"), and giving male pandas Viagra. Yes, Viagra. Nothing really seems to be working. Strike four. If panda porn isn't enough to get your mojo going, I don't know what is.
So what we have here is a species on the brink of extinction...for good reason. It is clear these animals are not supposed to be alive anymore. Humans are treating the plight of the pandas the way a 2 year old would treat the discovery of his dead goldfish. We keep playing with it, tapping the glass, tossing food into the tank all the while oblivious to the fact the thing is dead. DEAD. And we just don't know it yet. We're messing with mother nature's decision making process and if we're not careful, she'll tire of our misguided, naive, and somewhat adorable attempts to keep the pandas alive despite all the evidence they really don't seem to want to be, and we're going to piss her off. Mother nature was pms-ing when she killed the dinosaurs and wasted no time with wiping them out and starting over from scratch. Let the pandas go quietly and gently, otherwise, we might have another case of asteroidal annihilation on our hands, and that's not good for any of us...especially those of use who want to keep living.