Where can you find a turkey, a bear and a red panda all in one place?
Typically, the zoo is the best answer to that question. But this week it was the streets of Washington D.C.
After sightings in Gaithersburg, Md. last week, and Farfaix and Vienna, Va. on Monday, a 100-pound black bear was caught by city officials in northwest D.C. Wednesday. He was tranquilized and dropped back off at his home in Maryland -- much like some twenty-somethings on a Saturday night.
During the bear's ordeal Wednesday, the Smithsonian National Zoo felt the need to send out a tweet letting people know that the black bear did not escape from the zoo. Why? Because in the same week, a red panda by the name of Rusty escaped from its habitat at the zoo -- which was built, to, like, not allow animals to do that.
Perhaps Rusty had heard that Mintwood Place was named one of the best new restaurants in the world by Condé Nast Traveler and wanted to get a look for himself, so he made a break for Adams Morgan to try the goat cheese mountain pie, which, according to Washingtonian, is to die for.
No matter what the reason, Rusty's dramatic escape did teach us a couple of things about red pandas. For one: THEY ARE TOTALLY ADORABLE! And apparently some people don't understand that red pandas are, in fact, pandas. Like this Twitter user, who must not have seen the National Zoo's bear Tweet either:
And we learned the red panda was probably better off in his zoo enclosure in order to avoid people like this:
Last, but not least, a wild turkey was spotted all over the city. He doesn't seem to be causing anyone any trouble, but we're still keeping tabs on his movements.
Why were all of these animals roaming the streets of D.C.? We'll never know. All we can say for sure is that Washington D.C. seemed more like a game of Jumanji than the nation's capital.
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