Ex-French Pres. Admits to Panda Attack
Climbed into the enclosure
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More than three decades after the fact, former French president Valery Giscard d’Estaing has found the courage to admit that he was once the victim of a panda attack.
It happened at Paris’ Vincennes Zoo while he was in office. Giscard d’Estaing, now 87, had decided to test his “presidential courage” by climbing into the panda enclosure. Things didn’t go as planned and staff soon had to free the president from the claws of a panda after it leapt on him.
The chubby and vegetarian panda may not strike fear into the heart, but it is very territorial and will take sass from no one – not even from a man who is, according to BBC News, “often regarded as the most cultivated and most aristocratic of recent French presidents.” Lesson learned: A world leader may be above the laws of the zoo, but he is not above the vicious laws of nature.