National Zoo welcomes baby panda "I got a call ... a little after 10:45" from a senior curator saying "the behavior watcher just saw a birth," said Don Moore, associate director for animal care sciences. "I said, "Yeah, yeah, it's not April Fool's yet, so I'm going back to bed. " She said, "No, no, really. There's been a panda. Congratulations." " "I was not believing it," Moore said Monday. We gave this a very low percentage. We were prepared for another disappointment.... We bucked the odds ... and we've got a baby on the ground. "We're ecstatic," he said. She's being a very very good mom.... Every time the kid cries, she cradles it in a different way. What I'm looking at is really good mothering behavior. Moore said the panda camera caught the moment of birth. She kind of breathes funny and then she jerks her body, and then she stands up and kind of looks at something for just seconds ... and then picks it up. Zoo Director Dennis Kelly, who lives across the street from the zoo, said Monday: "Congratulations to all of us here in Washington." Officials said they have caught only a glimpse of the cub but can hear its "vocalizations" clearly. "It's very loud," Kelly said Monday. A high pitched, very loud squeal. It's surprisingly loud for a little critter that's only the size of a butter stick. Kelly said he has not seen the new cub, but he noted that panda cubs look like naked mole rats and weigh about four ounces. "This is still a very, very precarious situation," he said. This particular animal is very , very small, and we're going to watch it very carefully, and we're going to let mom take care of it unless we get some indication that something's wrong. So we're likely not to see much of her or the cub for about a week. Zoo officials are "going to watch and wait, and say our prayers just like everybody else in Washington," he said. "I'm elated," senior curator Brandie Smith said. I can't stop smiling. We're sitting in the panda house all together. We're giddy. We're still slightly in a state of shock. Just happy, excited, surprised. It's amazing. The zoo announced Aug. 20 that Mei had entered the final phase of her annual reproductive cycle - one that would conclude in 40 to 50 days, with or without a cub. Mei, 14, had been artificially inseminated on April 29 and 30 after she and the zoo's male giant panda, Tian Tian, 15, failed to mate successfully on their own. The zoo said it was instructive that she was inseminated with frozen sperm from Tian Tian that was saved after the successful insemination that produced the zoo's only prior cub, Tai Shan, in 2005. 4, the zoo went into the standard 24-hour-a-day panda pregnancy watch, in which volunteers monitor cameras in the panda compound day and night for signs of a cub.