Camera footage showed Roxie, a three-month-old, agitated by the noise. She died shortly afterward.
Roxie, a three-month-old panda, had just lost her mother, Ginger, five days earlier. Though the zookeepers at the Edinburgh Zoo were initially worried that she might not pull through, they became optimistic when she began to eat independently.
That optimism quickly turned to despair, after camera footage showed Roxie becoming agitated during a continual din of fireworks as the city celebrated its annual Bonfire Night.
“Roxie was very frightened by the fireworks,” Ben Supple, the deputy chief executive of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, which runs the zoo, said on Thursday night.
Roxie became ill, choked on her vomit, and died on Nov. 5. “It’s very sad to have lost Roxie at such a particularly young age,” Mr. Supple said. “Roxie would have been a wonderful ambassador for red pandas.”
The zoological society is now calling for greater restrictions on the extensive fireworks displays that are a trademark of Bonfire Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Night, the Nov. 5 celebration named after a participant in a failed plot in 1605 to kill King James I.
More than one million have signed a public petition seeking tighter controls on fireworks displays. The petition was delivered to the British government last week.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
