LMNOP

Against, considerable odds, there is a new baby panda cub in DC as of last night. Per WaPo:

The National Zoo’s female giant panda gave birth to a cub Sunday night, stunning and delighting zoo officials and sparking a new wave of panda mania in Washington seven years after the zoo’s only other cub was born in 2005.

The cub was born at 10:46 p.m. to Mei Xiang, the zoo said, and curator Becky Malinsky happened to be watching the 24-hour-a-day panda camera feed and heard the first squealing of the newborn.

Mei Xiang is just as suprised as you are.

In celebration/appreciation, a few panda links are most certainly in order. First off, here is some previous LMNOPanda coverage:

• Try Getting THESE Guys to Breed (featuring binder clip pandas)
• He Also Hates Ice Cream, Pizza, and Warm Woolen Mittens (on that guy who claims pandas should be allowed to go extinct)

Elsewhere:

• The zoo's footage of the birth. Don't get too excited; it's mostly just Mei Xiang kind of shifting around in her nest. Panda birth is apparently shrouded in as much mystery as panda pregnancy.
• Washingtonian's roundup of YouTube's best panda vids. Many classics here.
• National Zoo PandaCam. (Word to the un-wise, like me: it took me way too embarrassingly long to figure out that you have to X out the newsletter subscription box to see the cam. Telling you so you can get your panda fix faster than I did.)

P.S.: The giant panda cub's birth came just one day after International Red Panda Day, meaning the butter-stick sized baby already has at least one epic upstage under his belt.