You know how, after Pilgrim’s Bounty, you always wind up having so much leftover turkey and stuffing and whatnot that you look in your kitchen and think, “How am I EVER going to eat all this stuff?” And then the answer ends up being that you eat that shit for every meal every day until you get so sick of it you swear you’re never going to eat turkey again for as long as you live?

Yeah, well let me tell you, having a bunch of pandaren around fixes that problem DAMN quick. I don’t know what this “Huojin” thing is that these pandas all belong to, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if “Huojin” turned out to translate as “Are you going to finish that?”

Anyway, speaking of the pandas, Ji Firepaw has been taking his people around Kalimdor to get the lay of the land, chip in to help where they can (read: busywork), and get some experience for the greener pandas in the group. And that’s all good, but I’m also starting to get the distinct impression that Ji is going to be a whole bunch of work. Case in point: earlier today he was taking some of the Panda Brigade around in Ashenvale when he spotted some bees buzzing around the top of a tree. And I figure ol’ Ji must have thought to himself, “The only reason for there to be bees is for them to make honey. And the only reason for them to make honey is so I can eat it.” Because, you know, always thinking with his stomach.

So, from what the other pandas tell me, Ji tried to climb up the tree, but that wasn’t happening because cellulite, so he came running back to Orgrimmar to get working on Plan B. And you know that hot air balloon that the pandas used to come here from the Wandering Isle? The one that they’ve got hovering over their digs in the Valley of Honor? Yeah, well, Ji hopped on up onto the balloon, and back to Ashenvale he went.

All of this for some damn honey, by the way. You realize we have, like, vendors selling the shit by the case, right?

But boy oh boy, Ji didn’t think of that, because apparently you just don’t fucking think straight when you’re a panda who hasn’t eaten in like five minutes. So off he went with his balloon, and floated his way over to Ashenvale and right on up to the honey tree, and wound up dangling himself from the balloon trying to reach in for his snack. And you know what he found out? Brace yourselves: BEES DON’T FUCKING LIKE IT WHEN YOU MESS WITH THEIR HONEY. Can you believe that shit?

So now Ji’s dangling up there while trying to swat bees away from himself, and all his thrashing around sends the balloon floating away from the bee hive and crashing into ANOTHER tree. And get this — in the process, he managed to fly right into a hole in THAT tree, and jam himself in there right up to the waist, nice and tight.

Seriously, I like Ji, he seems like a good guy and all, but could dude be any more of a cartoon character?

Anyway, it was at this point that all of Ji’s panda buddies came scrambling into Grommash Hold to ask for help, so I headed over to check on the absurdity in progress. I flew up with Mortimer to where Ji’d gotten himself stuck and tried to yank him out, without much luck. I tried giving him a talking to while I was up there, but I think it fell on deaf ears — I was like, “Dude, did the thought never cross your mind that the bees might not like you fucking with their hive?”, but all he had to say was “Well, you can never tell with bees.”

It was pretty clear by then that we weren’t going to pull Ji out of the tree from up there, so I called in a few peons from the Warsong Lumber Camp to chop the damn tree down.

Ji broke three ribs and an arm in the fall. “Bouncy” my ass.

Punch line, by the way? Turns out, the hole in the second tree was actually home to a second bee hive. I don’t know where THOSE bees went off to, whether they got knocked out of the tree when Ji went careening into it, or if they saw the ridiculousness happening and went “Fuck this shit, we’re out,” or what. But they were long gone, which meant that while we were busy trying to get Ji down, he was busy stuffing his face with honey. So even when we got the tree down, fat lot of good — literally — trying to pull Ji out. Instead, the Warsong boys just cut away as much of the tree as possible around Ji…who’s going to be stuck walking around wearing a nice snug wooden belt until his newly mandated diet starts to kick in.

Pandas.