“Less filling? Tastes great? I don’t care! Bring me more!” Ya Ya declares--or so we think--as she contentedly chomps on a shoot of bamboo. --Photo by Deborah Laird

“We’ll have an order of bamboo, with a side of sugar cane, please!”

If pandas could talk, that might be the standard request from Le Le and Ya Ya, giant pandas from China which are the newest residents of the Memphis Zoo. And thanks to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, their bamboo meal requests are being answered.

Ya Ya--pronounced “Yah Yah”--is a two-year-old, 140-lb. female giant panda which came from the Beijing Zoo. Le Le--pronounced “Luh Luh”--is a four-year-old, 160 lb. male giant panda from the Shanghai Zoo. They both arrived at the Memphis Zoo on April 7 and then, following a mandatory ‘acclimation period,’ made their public debut on April 25.

“Pandas in zoos consume 20 to 40 pounds of bamboo each day, in addition to sugar cane and other vegetables,” noted Joel Douglas, manager of NRCS’s Jamie L. Whitten Plant Materials Center near Coffeeville, Miss.

“Yeah, this bamboo is as high as an elephant’s eye--and then some,” affirms NRCS’s Joel Douglas, as he treks through NRCS’s bamboo plot. --Photo by Deborah Laird

“The Memphis Zoo is trying to cultivate its own supply of bamboo, but bamboo is slow to grow, and its supply definitely isn’t ready yet,” he explained. “So the zoo had to locate a readily available supply of bamboo before the pandas would be allowed to leave China for Memphis.”

“That’s where we came into the picture.”

Janet Grabowski, an NRCS agronomist at the Plant Materials Center, recounted that in the 1960s plant materials specialists with the [then] Soil Conservation Service began growing and evaluating “Oriental bamboo” experimentally, at the Center, for erosion control purposes. “It was part of a project to see if bamboo would help with stream bank erosion and serve as a buffer for windbreaks in the Mississippi Delta,” she said.

That idea was ultimately abandoned because bamboo turned out to be very unmanageable. However, it is still growing on about four acres at the Center. “It’s hard to initially establish, but once it’s growing it may become invasive and quick to spread,” Grabowski advised. “Here at the Center it’s not really a problem, but it would cost too much to try to eliminate it--so we just let it be.”

“To those pandas, this bamboo leaf will probably look like dessert,” quips Otis Pomerlee (right), a gardener with NRCS’s Jamie L. Whitten Plant Materials Center near Coffeeville, Miss., as Center Manager Joel Douglas gets ready to use his machete to cut a shoot of bamboo. They were in the Center’s four-acre bamboo plot--the source for the bamboo meals being provided to two giant pandas which recently took up residence at the Memphis Zoo. --Photo by Deborah Laird

Memphis Zoo officials knew about the bamboo growing at the Center, which is located about an hour’s drive south of Memphis. So they contacted NRCS about the possibility of partnering on the project of bringing two pandas from China to the zoo. Last fall, Homer Wilkes, NRCS’s state conservationist for Mississippi, based in Jackson, signed an agreement with Memphis Zoo officials to allow the zoo to harvest the bamboo growing at the Center.

Otis Pomerlee, an NRCS gardener at the Center, explained that a truck from the zoo makes the trek to the Center, and zoo personnel do the harvesting of the bamboo, which they get for free.

Tricia Taylor, an NRCS secretary at the Center, added that Ya Ya--which means “beautiful little girl” in Chinese--and Le Le--which translates as “happy happy”--no doubt appreciate the deliveries of that dietary staple. “That’s because during a typical day, a panda spends 14 hours eating and the other 10 sleeping,” she said.

“We’re happy to help keep those pandas happy,” affirmed NRCS gardener Jon Allison. “And we can give them seconds on bamboo anytime!” •

--Jeannine May

When Kenya Bradley Nicholas, a loan specialist with the Electric Program in the Rural Utilities Service, was assigned to respond to a letter written to President George W. Bush from a resident of North Carolina, it didn’t seem out of the ordinary. “Many letters ultimately come to USDA from people asking for help with their personal lives,” she observed.

But the outcome of this letter ended up with a particularly happy ending, because of a strong USDA working relationship with a rural electric cooperative.

“Our administrator, Hilda Legg, has emphasized,” said Nicholas, “that responsive customer service should be a major feature of our jobs as RUS employees.” So Nicholas checked to see if the woman who had written the letter--asking for help with her utility bills--was served by an RUS Electric Program borrower. “I found out that the woman, who lives in Winnabow, North Carolina, is served by the Brunswick Electric Membership Corporation in Shallotte, North Carolina,” she said.

Bradley had worked with that rural electric cooperative before and knew its employees. So she called Chip Leavitt, its general manager. “I asked him if he’d check on the woman and see what could be done about the situation,” she said.

It turns out that the woman had been a lifelong member of that rural electric cooperative. When co-op field supervisor Tim Tippett visited her, he found an 84-year-old woman in a wheelchair, living in her childhood home--but with only one room being heated.

“The woman had serious financial problems--but it hadn’t come to the attention of the co-op because she had been paying her electric bill on time,” Bradley noted. “But her gas for heat had been cut off and she had cancelled her phone service because she decided she couldn’t afford it.”

Tippett, in turn, reported back to the co-op management that the cooperative would want to find a way to help the woman. In fact, the next day he took her a package of food and an assurance that more help was on the way. Co-op staffers conferred with the local sheriff’s office--which provided an additional delivery of food, household supplies, and some clothes. “Co-op employees took up a collection to help their neighbor,” Bradley added.

In addition, co-op staffers contacted the local Social Services agency to make sure the woman was receiving the types of assistance from that agency for which she was eligible. And co-op staffers told her to not worry about her electric bills while her situation was being worked out.

“The White House forwarded the woman’s letter to several agencies, USDA being one,” Bradley affirmed. “And here in RUS we had the relationship with the appropriate local electric cooperative--plus the initiative to check out the situation.”

“The co-op and its local community did the rest.” •

--Claiborn Crain