Chip on the ol' shoulder

Reader Response from "Time Magazine"

Giant pandas are like a boyfriend or girlfriend who is staggeringly good looking but otherwise brainless and self-absorbed. Pandas often have to be artificially inseminated because so many have lost the most primal of urges. When pandas reproduce, many cubs have to be cared for by zookeepers because the mothers take no interest in them. Over time, pandas have worked themselves into an impossible ecological niche. They eat almost nothing but bamboo shoots and then, depending upon their appetite at the moment, only certain varieties. If the right kind of bamboo is unavailable, they will starve to death. If ever there was an example of a species hell-bent on committing suicide, it is the giant panda. In keeping with the Darwinian concept of survival of the fittest, we should allow them to do so.

Holmes Brannon, WOODLAND PARK, COLO.