The Struggle To Save The Giant Panda by Tessa Pollock & Marlie Poepperling

The black and white juvenile pandas roll around in the zoo keeper’s hands; all the visitors gaze in wonder at the infant pandas. But there’s more to their creatures than meets the eye. Behind all those balls of fluff is a critically endangered species. Their lives are threatened by hunters, and poachers, and even animal abusers. There are many endangered animals on Earth, but one of the most threatened species is the Giant Panda. 

Daily life

A day in the life of a panda starts with eating stalks, leaves, and stems of a thick bamboo forest. Although Giant pandas eat tons of bamboo, like an herbivore, they actually have a carnivore-like digestive system. So the pandas have to eat 20-40 lbs of bamboo a day to make up for the low nutrition value. They have to spend ⅔ of their day eating and at least 4 hours of sleep. That's a lot of eating! Did you know that 90-98% of a panda's diet is made up of bamboo? Well, bamboo also has lots of water inside of the hollow stem, so it gives the panda fluids as well as nutrients.

But pandas don’t just eat bamboo, they also can eat cereals, milk, garden fruits, vegetables, small rodents, eggs, and fish, but they do so rarely, so they can’t live outside bamboo forests. Now you're probably wondering, “How do they grab all of this food?” Well, you're in luck because we are going to tell you exactly that. Giant Pandas have a special elongated wrist bone that acts sort of like a thumb. This makes pandas be able to grab the food.  Furthermore, pandas droppings weigh about the same as 4 bowling balls! Imagine having to pick that up after each feeding session. But when you think about it, it kinda makes sense, they do excrete 100 times per day. Plus, they even defecate in their sleep. They’re known to have 11-25 droppings laid in just 2 hours. 

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Problems For Pandas

The Giant panda lives in the misty mountains of Central China. The 10,000 foot tall bamboo forest surrounds them, but they haven’t been here forever. In fact, they used to live in the lowlands of China. Pandas are mostly solitary, but most live in small groups that share a territory. Each panda’s territory is about 4-6 kilometers, and they don’t like pandas who are in different groups. 

Although adult pandas are rather large, they produce the smallest offspring of any mammal. One baby panda is 1/1000 of the size of its mother and weighs about 5 ounces. The newborn panda is blind for at least 45 days and needs a lot of help from its mother. One reason the pandas’ numbers are declining is that the newborn pandas have problems defecating. Defecating means excreting waste. Another reason that pandas’ offspring have less of a chance for making it to adulthood is that adult pandas have limited days to produce. They can only produce newborn pandas once a year, and in that time only 2-3 days can they become pregnant. Most female pandas can only successfully raise about 5-8 cubs in a lifetime. Only female pandas who are 4-8 years old can produce panda cubs, and at 20 years they can no longer produce. “I don’t know how many years I will spend trying to complete this second mission, but I won’t give up until it’s done,” remarked Papa Panda, an animal keeper trying to fix the natural problems of pandas.

Threatened by Humans

There are lots of reasons why pandas are going extinct,and most of them are caused mainly by humans. Some of these include humans destroying or damaging habitats for farming and tourism, overhunting, poaching, fishing, introducing invasive species, polluting, continuing the exotic pet trade, and contributing to climate change. Because of these threats, pandas were forced into living in the mountains on the eastern edge of Tibet in the provinces of Szechwan, Shaanxi, Shensi, and Kansu, which in total is 5,000 square miles. Pandas started dying off because there is not as much bamboo as they needed in the mountain, which is causing starvation to many panda groups.

Right now in the world, there are about 1,864 pandas left in the wild that are trying to survive. Humans cut down bamboo forests, which takes 5-10 years to recover. Some pandas rely on a type of bamboo that only blooms at a certain time. Now, thanks to humans these pandas can’t eat during that period when it grows. In the next 80 years, climate change will kill 35% of the pandas’ habitats. “Climate change eliminates 1/3 of the bamboo forest that pandas rely on,” said Angeli Gabriel, a panda interviewer at National Geographic.

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Zoos and Shelters Doing Their Part

Su-Lin, a small baby panda, was one of the many Giant Pandas exhibited in the west of China. She soon reached the U.S in 1936 as a popular attraction at the Brookfield Zoo, until her death in 1938. Su-Lin’s life as a panda didn't last very long because zoos aren't doing all that they can to help these animals.

But, people are now trying to bring pandas back. Pandas can live to about 30 years in captivity and about 20 years in the wild. Looks like they can live 10 years longer in captivity! Now there are 120 pandas in captivity with population numbers increasing. In 1990 China expanded its efforts to bring back and help the Giant Panda. They went from 14 sites to 40, and the pandas moved up on the IUCN meter to be vulnerable from endangered in 2016. That’s an increase of 17% pandas over the last decade! “They are a critically endangered species, but with the collaboration of what we’ve been doing, working with China, we’re bringing the numbers back,” stated Juan Rodriguez, an Animal Keeper at the Giant Pandas Smithsonian’s National Zoo.

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How we can help

These zoos and shelters are doing a pretty decent job of protecting the giant panda, but we’re not animal keepers, so how can we help them? Well, first you need to be aware of these endangered species, so you can help them, which you already finished by reading this article. But you also can’t just sit around after you know what’s happening to them. You also have to do something about it. One thing we can do is donate to a charity. Donating $19 is enough money to buy films for an infrared camera. $56 can send a ranger on a training course, and $1,392 will save an injured panda. You can do this on the World Wildlife Fund! 

You can also sponsor a panda. When you give money to a certain panda you can get things back like a stuffed animal panda, a birth certificate of the panda, pictures, and more. Another way to help pandas without giving money is to use less paper. Pandas rely on bamboo for most of their food source, and the main reason why people are cutting down bamboo forests is that they need to make paper. When you do use that paper, remember to recycle it and choose recycled paper products. Greenhouse gasses also affect pandas and their environment also. If you walk, bike, use video conferences, carpool, and choose high-efficiency rated airplanes, you are already helping pandas and other endangered species. Other ways you can help are turning off lights when you leave a room and hanging up freshly washed clothes to dry, instead of putting them in a dryer.

"Humans share the earth for a short life span. Many people do not think about endangered life forms. Our awareness of the challenges they face in existing every day must be addressed if these life forms are going to continue to exist." - Harry, California

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Other facts about giant pandas

  • They can stand on hind legs, summersault, and love to roll around in the dust

  • Pandas are capable of swimming and love climbing

  • Pandas don’t use visual signals like a mane, flexible ears, and swishing tails

  • They make lots of vocal sounds when mating or playing

  • Pandas don’t roar like other bears

  • They rely on their sense of smell, this is called olfaction

  • Their fur helps them blend in with their habitat. White for snowy backgrounds, and black for shady forests

  • They are the size of an American Black Bear


Works Cited


Knives Out- The Masterpiece to bring back Rian Johnson's career. Review by Matty Zimmerman

Rating: 9.5/10 Matty Score

Knives Out, which is written and directed by Rian Johnson, might be the magnum opus of the mystery movie genre. Rian does this with stunning visuals, music, and sound effects. They all combine to create an amazing atmosphere like no other, that very few movies can compete with. The plot is perfect with fluidity that keeps you with the story and a storyline keeps you trying to think who it could be, as well as changing what you think a mystery plot can be.

Rian gives those perfect hints, that it takes 2+ times watching the movie for you to catch on to, but that would let you know the whole plot if you knew them. Then the whole movie comes to a close, with one of those amazing detective rants where they go through all the clues and name the murderer. This movie is a true masterpiece that I would suspect would revitalize the career of Rian Johnson and possibly create sequels with the characters. There is already a second one planned, but does it deserve a second film, only time will tell...


Image Source: IMDB

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The Crimes of J.K. Rowling: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald Movie Review by Elliott Mathews

Don’t get me wrong, J.K. Rowling is amazing at writing books. She’s one of the greatest at it I know.

But writing a book and writing a movie are two very different things.

One might think that the richest woman in all of Great Britain, a very successful author, would be able to script an amazing blockbuster movie, full of all of the wit and uncanny skill crammed into her books. But what we got from Rowling in November of 2018 was Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, a sub-50% Rotten Tomatoes flick that is the sort of movie that will make you wish, as you leave the theater after watching it, that you could’ve hit pause in order to decipher the complicated plot. Over the course of an excruciating 2-hour-14-minute long Baroque display of special effects, the viewer’s brain is bent as they attempt to follow the characters’ complex story threads while they (the threads, that is) wind themselves into an increasingly convoluted, and flawed, tapestry of plot.

Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), the protagonist of the movie, returns to the screen as a charming, although fairly shallow, magical zookeeper of sorts. His layer of awkward humor tries (rather unsuccessfully) to cover up his lack of defining character traits and emotional depth. Also coming back in this movie are Redmayne’s altogether more interesting costars, Katherine Waterston (as Tina Goldstein), Dan Fogler (Jacob Kowalski), Alison Sudol (Tina’s sister Queenie), and Ezra Miller (Credence Barebone). These familiar faces are joined by new actors Zoë Kravitz, Callum Turner, Claudia Kim, William Nadlyam, and Jude Law, the last as a young Albus Dumbledore. Johnny Depp plays the titular Grindelwald in an “utterly unmemorable” performance as a dark wizard who “looks like he’s been dipped in flour,” according to The New York Times.

The least of this film’s many problems is its inaccuracies with the original series. In Crimes, Professor Dumbledore teaches Defense Against the Dark Arts class at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, while a careful reader of the original Harry Potter series (such as me) would realize that the future headmaster was actually supposed to teach Transfiguration. In addition to this, more things are invented about Dumbledore’s character, such as his *spoiler alert!* long-lost relative. A bigger problem with this movie is the identities of its characters. Turner apparently plays Newt Scamander’s brother, but that is never made clear. Neither was it clarified that Kim’s character was actually later to become the snake of Voldemort, the main villain of the original Harry Potter series. Nadlyam could have been left out of the movie entirely, and it would have been no more confusing. Queenie, Sudol’s character, who was so charming in the first movie, turns evil by the end of “Crimes” for no clear reason at all.

The worst of these confusing characters is perhaps Leta Lestrange (Kravitz), whose backstory is complex to the point of bewildering. Over a plot-interrupting 5-minute flashback, she is revealed to be Scamander’s former love interest, creating a strange dynamic between the two of them throughout the entire movie. To make the romantic subplot, which seems hastily added into the movie at the last second, more interesting, Newt and his brother are both interested in Lestrange, ultimately fighting over her, before she is killed by Grindelwald.

Another big problem with this movie is its dissatisfying ending. The conclusion threatens a third (likely worse, if possible) Fantastic Beasts movie. Many loose ends are left untied in the second installment of the franchise, which (if the viewers are lucky) will be shoddily tied up in the last movie of the aforementioned potential trilogy, if (if the viewers are unlucky) it ever comes out. This series of sequels is very close to beginning to tarnish the chrome legacy of the original Harry Potter movies.

The Harry Potter series is untouchable. Don’t touch it.


Image Source: https://www.fantasticbeasts.com/

Image Source: https://www.fantasticbeasts.com/

What Went Wrong During the Super Bowl by Elliott Mathews

Something went wrong during Super Bowl LV on Sunday. It wasn’t that the Kansas City Chiefs got seven flags in the first half alone. It wasn’t that Patrick Mahomes completed practically zero passes. It wasn’t even that the Buccaneers won. No, this was different. This was a Super Bowl halftime mistake reminiscent of the Left Shark Disaster of 2014: the blue building.

If you are like the vast majority of the American population, you watched at least some of the Super Bowl on February 7th. If you watched the whole thing, you saw the Buccaneers rout the Chiefs in an extremely ugly game of football. You also would’ve seen The Weeknd’s halftime show performance. Overall, the show was well-done, if a little bit dizzying and/or blinding. But there was one thing which went wrong.

At the beginning of his show, The Weeknd walked out onto a tiered stage covered in small buildings with neon color-changing outlines, which were blue at this point. After he sung his first song, the outlines of all of the buildings changed to a shade of gold.

Except one.Throughout the entire show, one building remained a garish shade of bright neon blue. Even as the buildings around it shifted through a psychedelic range of bright colors, this building remained steadfast in its appearance. When all of the buildings turned off at one point during the show, the building stayed sky-blue. Was this a mistake, or was it on purpose? Why was one building unable to change its color?

We may never know.

Image Source: Entertainment Weekly

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The Christmas Spirit by Elliott Mathews

Christmas is soooo close, I can almost taste it. But how long have I been waiting for it? After Thanksgiving, it’s officially the Christmas season. Are people hyping Christmas too early, and how can we start getting into the spirit a little bit later? I interviewed two PFMS students for their opinions.;


Henry Mathews: Yes, people are hyping Christmas too early.

I think that we shouldn’t start thinking about Christmas until December. People shouldn’t get their Christmas trees super early, either. If you’ve ever watched the classic Christmas movie “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” Charlie Brown gets super sad and worried about Christmas and he doesn’t know how he should feel. In the movie, this is due to the fact that Christmas is getting too commercialized and the season is starting too early. Overall, I don’t think people should start hyping Christmas until December, and people shouldn’t act like that woman in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade who got her Christmas tree four weeks before Thanksgiving.


Andreas Schmitz: No, people are not hyping Christmas too early.

I think that it is never too early to decorate for Christmas because it is an awesome holiday.


So what do you think? Are people decorating for Christmas too early, or are they doing fine?

Note: Henry’s interview was edited for length and clarity.


Creative Writing Spotlight: "The Forgotten" by Genevieve Adkins

The Forgotten

Hear the voices of the forgotten

As they claw at your feet

You can walk past them

You can ignore them

You have the power

Hear the cries of their children

As hunger pierces their bellies

As tears fall from their eyes

You can walk past them

You can ignore them

You have the power

Hear the shouts of the youth

As men in black and blue murder them

They fought because you wouldn’t

And they payed for it

You can walk past them

You can ignore them

You have the power

Hear the whispers of the ghosts

Of those who were not saved

Count every rib

On their starved body

Every cut

On their bleeding body

You walked past them

You ignored them

You had the power

And their hearts have stopped

Their eyes are cold, and dead

Because nobody stopped for them
Nobody will remember them

They are all the forgotten

Everyone ignored them

Or scorned them
Scorned their fellow human

Who once had blood running through their veins

Who once laughed, and smiled, and cried

Who once jumped onto tabletops

And fought for freedom

Or huddled into corner with their family

To try and stay warm

They are not the concerns of the common man

But they must be

Join their fight

Join their ranks, as a friend, a comrade

And resign yourself to their fates

If you perish

If blood flows down your broken body

If you choke, and cough for air

Finding none

At least

You will

Have fought





Pangolins Need Our Help by Ian Bellora-Wang

Not a lot of people know about pangolins, and more people definitely should. They are an amazing animal with a really good defense, which is a reason why they were able to spread from Africa to China. What they can do, is roll themselves up into a scaly ball, and it is practically indestructible. Despite the scales, pangolins are actually mammals, and are very endangered. You may be wondering, “If they have such a good defense, then why are they so endangered?”

The answer: Humans. Humans have been destroying the pangolins habitat for decades, and have been using the animals themselves for medicines, that aren’t even scientifically proven to actually work. If we want to keep these animals around, more people will have to know about them, and spread the word. Humans, who have been decimating pangolin habitat and the animals themselves, may be their only hope now.


The Ups and Downs of Hybrid Learning By: Marcus Auvillain

Learning in class one day and being on a computer the next trying to understand what the teacher is saying is much more different than being home all the time or in class everyday. I know this because I am a hybrid student. There are many ups and downs to this type of learning.

An up in learning is this the thought of getting to hang out with your friends in school. It isn’t as much time as people who are in school everyday, but it is definitely a nice thought. Also, it is better than the people who are fully remote, because that year they don’t meet any of the people in school, so if they are still in middle school when Covid-19 blows past and we don’t have to go onto a zoom meeting anymore, the fully remote kids will have to start off as if this was there first time meeting the kids in school. Which, it kind of is.

A down in learning this way is the stress between the two roles: one day in school and the next, zoom. Being on zoom isn’t so stressful, but I have to pay more attention than I do in class because at any point, the audio could cut out, and the teacher is speaking through a microphone with a mask on, so I usually have to turn the volume all the way up and be close to the computer to be able to understand the teacher as I would in class. But, other than that the zoom day isn’t so hard. Though at night, after being so relaxed, I have to get my bag ready for a rushed, crowded day of in-person school.

Another up in hybrid learning is, on the remote day, I can just stand up and get a snack whenever I want, because the kitchen is only a few yards away. Also, I can be on my bed or couch slumping, while the others have to sit in a metallic plastic kind of chair, sitting straight. 

A down about hybrid learning is the masks with in person school. They are pretty stuffy, and we can’t even take them off during mask breaks if we want to play sports, because they say we have to keep them on, since we’re so “close” to each other. So, if you want to play kickball, you won’t get a mask break at all throughout the day, only when you are eating lunch.

An up about hybrid learning is being able to do the experiments one day, and when the next group of students does it, you can catch up on any late assignments or readings you need to do. For example, in science class, I did an experiment one day, and the next day I just did my assignments, and everything else the teacher told us to do.

A down about hybrid learning is, when I am remote, I have to stare at the screen all day. And since I use mask breaks to catch up with my work, I really don’t get a break. Only for lunch and during the activity period I sometimes go outside. And, by the time school is done, I still have homework on the computer that I have to do, so it adds more time staring at a screen. 

There are many ups and downs in hybrid learning. It is still fun in school, but less fun with Covid-19 lurking around every state, infecting people. If I am going to be honest, I liked it much much better when there wasn’t any remote learning and masks and this disease. I think everyone liked it better without Covid-19. So, as this article ends, I encourage everyone to stay safe!


The Ups and Downs of Fully Remote Learning by Sophia Seidel (contributing author Marcus Auvillain)

Remote learning is definitely different from being in school (I’m talking about both before the pandemic and during it.). I know because I am a fully remote student. There are many pluses to being remote, but there are also some not so good attributes to go with it.

One of those not so good attributes is I get really tired of staring at the computer screen all day. I’m pretty sure my eyes have gotten worse. Since most of the homework assignments and activities are on the computer, it’s added to my screen time. So is typing up this. Sometimes, when nearing the eighth period, I get headaches, and when I ask my friends, they sometimes do too. 

A plus to remote learning is being able to wake up late. Unlike the in-school students, I don’t have to worry about getting on the bus or walking to school on time, getting my chromebook charged for class, since I can keep it charging while learning, and a few extra minutes of beauty sleep.

There are more negative parts to remote learning. It sometimes gets really boring. There are some activities only the students in school can do and trying them out at home isn’t the same. Since teachers can’t send everything home, and there are sometimes internet problems, it just isn’t the same experience.

A positive, since I seem to be alternating between them, is fully remote students get more free time. Remote students have five minutes of instead of transitioning to classes, the remote students get five minutes of free time because clicking a link only takes a few seconds. If a person is fully remote, they get the five minutes everyday! There is also the activity period/lunch time. If the student is not required to attend the activity period, it means more time to spread out lunch and take the time to do things.

Since I seem to have more positives than negatives - and I think that’s a good thing, for me at least - I’m going to break my positive-negative chain. I don’t have to wear a mask all day! I don’t really know what it's like to wear a mask all day, but I do know what it’s like to wear a mask for about thirty minutes. The insides get stuffy, sometimes, depending on the mask, the straps on the ears start aching, maybe it might get itchy. I know there’s mask breaks, but some kids like to play sports and that requires masks. So, even with the mask breaks, the in-school students are wearing the masks for a while. Since I’m fully remote, I don’t have to wear one! 

Even though learning remotely is great at times, if I could choose to go back to before the pandemic and start middle school without covid-19 floating around, I would choose that. There are so many complications and things we can’t do since everyone has to social distance or stay at home.

I am going to conclude this here because if I keep thinking, there will be more negatives than positives or there will be too many things to count. So, if you are a fully in-school student or an alternating one, and you were wondering how it’s like to be fully remote, you got your answer.