HELP SAVE THIS PANDA!

I’m asking you, please help me save my panda. He lives with me and my family. It’s not like any of us ever wanted a panda. But when Dad won a big poker game against our dry-cleaner, Mom wouldn’t let him accept the originally agreed-upon prize of the dry-cleaner’s firstborn daughter. So we got stuck with the panda. We named him Bruce Lee and he now lives in our basement. I never would have guessed it at first, but we’ve really grown close to Bruce Lee. He’s a blast at parties, and he isn’t half bad at Scrabble, either. But after time, party guests only payed attention to Bruce Lee when they needed to use his nails to open a bottle of beer. Not to mention the fact that words like “Tiananmen” and “Mao” got old quickly when they were used 16 times per Scrabble round. But the worst part of all of this is that Dad lost his job six months ago. Times have been hard. I know Bruce Lee can feel the tension, too. Especially since we took his crate away to use for firewood. We now keep him in an old refrigerator box. We haven’t been able to afford his special duck sauce diet for at least a month. And ever since family dinners have turned to instant oatmeal, Dad has been mentioning “panda steak” quite a bit-- along with panda sausage, panda jerky, and something he mentions around breakfast called “pandacakes”. I try to cheer Bruce Lee up by playing with him, but he has lost interest in almost everything. Even his yo-yo doesn’t cheer him up. I know it’s hard to yo-yo with only a string, but we had to sell the actual yo-yo so we could afford toilet paper. Tuesday was the worst. Bruce Lee started banging a tin cup on the bars of his box. I don’t think he really trusts anyone anymore; especially Mom. It’s like he knows that she bought a pattern for pandaskin slacks. I don’t know what to do. I mean, I’ve gotten pretty fond of the fluffball. And I don’t think I would enjoy “pandacakes”, even if we could afford butter and syrup. I’m trying to get in touch with Sally Struthers to see if she can help bust out Bruce Lee, get him some immunizations, and a high school education, but he needs your help, too. So please, if you can, help me save my panda.