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Funeral for panda killed in China quake

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Nearly a month after China’s devastating earthquake, the Associated Press reports that the Wolong Nature Reserve held a funeral today for a panda that was crushed in the temblor.

The world famous panda center was badly damaged by the May 12 quake, but officials initially thought all 64 pandas had survived. They later discovered that two were missing. Nine-year-old Mao Mao, the mother of five at the breeding center, was found Monday, her body crushed by a wall of her enclosure when the river behind it swelled with landslide debris. Today, panda keepers and other workers placed her remains in a small wooden crate and wheeled her quietly to a patch of ground outside the breeding center where a freshly dug hole waited.

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Forty-seven pandas continue to live at Wolong, while one other panda, Xiao Xiao, remains missing.

--Alice Short

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