CHIANG MAI, Thailand - Two pandas were married by a mammal-loving matrimonial minister that had nearly quit practicing until his phone rang relaying the good news. Thailand on Wednesday marks the 28th birthday of their zoo and what officials hope is the start of their mating season. There are only about 1,000 pandas that remain in the wild, which is up from a consensus conducted over a decade ago. So the zoo is elated that its rump humping season, and to allay any potential disappointments they are lacing the pandas bamboo and egg rolls with Viagra.
The traditional Chinese ceremony was held for 5-year-old male Chuang Chuang and 4-year-old female Lin Hui, lent to the zoo in the northern city of Chiang Mai for 10 years in 2003, Thai and Chinese officials said. They were wined and dined and dressed by ritzy maitre d's and taken to the Radisson Hotel to freshen up to set the mood.
"Start making children soon. Don't let me down," Chinese Consul Peng Ren Dong told a couple of clowns dressed as pandas that were ballroom dancing to commemorate the festival of fornication during a colorful tea ceremony which is part of Chinese wedding rites along with human backgammon and eating a hamburger with chopsticks.
The ceremony, formally called The Happiness & Fun Fair to avoid offending liberalists who think "marrying" animals is dignified, started on an unseasonably hot and murky morning in Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's home town. It was too soon for the monsoon season and with the torrential rain gone the suns rays magnified through the humidity inducing the melting of the armpits phenomenon.
Hundreds of people in traditional costumes, led by Thai drummers and dragon dancers, marched from a city gate to the Radisson Hotel to join in with loin cloths and chests of gold coins to give to the bears as a congratulatory gesture for hittin those skins.
The next day after fogging up the windows and setting off smoke detectors the "bride" was wearing a traditional red and white Chinese headdress -- rode in a convertible car at the head of a parade of people waving Chinese and Thai flags and mascots and bounced Viagra tablets off her head.
The parade stopped at a school where drum dancers performed, then paused at the Chinese consulate for a dragon dance during its 4 km (2.5 mile) route to the zoo, where the pandas live in a $1 million refrigerated mansion equipped with a natural freshwater stream and bamboo garden for smorgasbords and sexual escapades.
One of the clowns, a teenage girl, had to sit down from her ballroom dancing and inhale eucalyptus oil to prevent herself from fainting after spending a couple of hours in the panda costume. She was fretting that her costume might dissuade the male panda from his marriage so she took off her mask, giving everyone some relief.
After the tea ceremony, the real pandas -- who eat only bamboo -- were showered with fruit, ice cream and a three-tier ice cake decorated with dragons and a mountain of Viagra tablets. Their human proxies were sprinkled with water to fight the heat after the guy finally took his mask off as well
Zoo officials said they hoped Thailand's hot climate would bring forward the pandas' mating season to November from the March-May period in their native China. But if that didn't set the stage then there would be orgies, more Viagra and pet porn to give them a boost because they are the future.
"We believe the sun and heat in Thailand will have an impact on their hormone system and will accelerate their reproductive capability," senior zoologist Thanong Nateepitak was quoted as saying as he dramatized a panda bears erection with a cucumber.
