
On a snow-blanketed field in Virginia, a handful of workers were silent but for the groan of a chainsaw chopping through bamboo -- a delicacy for their furry clients down the road in the US capital of Washington.
The team, bundled up for the cold, then stuffed up to 700 bamboo stalks into a pickup truck to be driven 70 miles (110 kilometres) to the Smithsonian's National Zoo to feed, among others, its newly arrived pandas.