A loud banging on the door woke Levi from his dreamless sleep. To his irritation, no matter how hard he said “Shhhh” to the front door, the person at this door would not knock it off. Levi slowly sat up and grabbed a pair of flip-flops, which for some reason were both meant to go on his left foot. Awkwardly sticking his two rightmost toes through the loop that was meant for the big toe, he walked towards the door accompanied by loud crunching sounds. Right. He’d have to clean that broken glass up at some point as well. His growing annoyance by how his day already started with responsibilities, the thing he tried to avoid most, especially on days like these, only got worse when he entered the hallway and almost tripped over a large amount of empty paint cans. After having zigzagged through the mess, he finally reached the front door.

Two stern-looking men in uniform stood at the door. After identifying themselves as policemen, they stated having ‘a substantiated suspicion’ that the perpetrators of some illegal painting that had been done throughout the city that night could be found in this house. Having no recollection of being artistic last night, Levi chuckled a bit. “I’m afraid your suspicions must be mistaken, gentlemen. I have actually done some nice wine-tasting with my housemates last night, and we have not left the house, most certainly not to go painting.” At that point Levi remembered what he had almost tripped over on his way to the front door, and he suddenly felt a bit less certain about the cops being mistaken and not he himself. Whatever doubts still remained quickly vanished as the policemen took a step to the side, and the pavement leading up to the house became visible. There, in ruby-coloured paint, were four sets of footprints walking up to the house.

At that point, he slowly remembered more of the events of the night before. After a highly successful wine-tasting session, he and his housemates had decided to watch a nature documentary. This was where they heard that in 2015, the global Red Panda population had officially gone from IUCN status ‘vulnerable’ to ‘endangered’. While none of them liked hearing this, the news had seemed especially devastating to Lucas, whom at that point had proceeded watching the documentary whilst crying into a pillow. Looking back at it, Levi suspected this dramatic response may have been not entirely unrelated to the amount of alcohol they all had had at this point. But, seeing as they were not only housemates but also close friends, the other three housemates had wanted to support Lucas. It was because of this feeling of solidarity that, upon hearing one of the main threats to the red panda population was habitat loss, they decided to do something about the matter. They took the cans with red paint they had stored in the shed, which they had bought a couple days before with the intention of painting the walls of the common living room, and ventured out into the city. There, at a couple of the biggest roads in the city, they took off their shoes, covered the soles of their feet with red paint, and walked across the road. In huge letters below the footprints, they painted “SLOW! RED PANDAS CROSSING!”. If the red pandas could safely live in the city, they would have more habitat, after all. However, it still did not feel as though they were making enough of a difference. Therefore, they dumped their shoes in the canal and continued throughout the city barefoot, continuously applying red paint to the soles of their feet. After all, didn’t the red pandas deserve to have the entire city as their habitat?

Only problem is, they probably should have stopped it a bit before entering their house. This did explain the ruby-coloured footsteps in the living room, though. Levi sighed, and invited the policemen in, after which he went to wake up his roommates. They were probably going to have to pay quite a bit of money for this night. And worst of all, they would probably remove all the red panda crossings from the city! Now what was a red panda to do when he ever found himself in the city of Reykjavík?