Open Post: Hosted By The Pandemic Pandas Of Frankfurt
As we all know, no one can sway and manipulate us like a cute animal. Snouting my knee at this moment is my criminally persuasive dog, intent on coaxing me into unchaining myself from my desk and fetching him a liver-flavored cookie. (The pause you hear right now is me doing the pup’s nefarious bidding, as it should be.) Meanwhile, in Germany, Giuseppe Fichera, manager of Frankfurt’s Pino restaurant, has offered up some adorable furry sweetness for passersby and would-be customers during the rest of the city’s mandated lockdown of certain venues. According to Reuters, the very well-mannered pandas were employed as a peaceful protest.
via Reuters:
The owner of a Frankfurt restaurant is staging a protest against the coronavirus lockdown in Germany by filling his tables with a hundred stuffed toy pandas, in a play on the word “pandemic”.
German officials are expected on Wednesday to agree to extend until Dec. 20 a “lockdown light” they imposed on Nov. 2 that means bars, restaurants and entertainment venues must stay closed, while shops and schools can remain open.
“We wanted to put some life back into our restaurant,” said Guiseppe [sic] Fichera, manager of restaurant Pino. “They are Panda-Mic pandas.”
The pandas are seated at the restaurant’s tables and propped up at the bar, some with bottles of Corona beer.
I suspect some of the panda seat fillers (not to be confused with the hottest and most in-demand seat filler of them all, Phoebe Price) may prefer a different menu, one that involves fresh bamboo and other fibrous outdoor bits, but for the moment, they all seem quite content with their bottles of Corona and each other’s blissfully quiet and fluffy company.
And in case you were wondering what a real-life panda looks like while feasting on its native diet, here is a baby munching on bamboo: