The Boy is notorious for his love of cuddly animals, whether or not they want to be cuddly…I am slightly more skeptical, but tend to go along for the ride, unprepared, but ready to write the story.   However, when our 5 and 7 year old niece and nephew learned we were going to Madagascar AND had never seen the iconic film, they sat me down for a viewing…  So when we woke up bright and early in the Mantadia rainforest, I was half expecting some lovely ringtails in grass skirts to welcome me…and instead I got Morris. [Ed. note: ring tailed lemurs don’t live anywhere near the rainforest…geez!]

Don’t get me wrong, Morris is a lovely man.  Somewhere around my dad’s age, but could run laps around us even if we weren’t sweating out the carafe of wine from the night before.  Morris grew up in this forest and knew just where to find the flora and fauna everyone desired…however much to his disappointment our interest lay solely in the cuddly fauna and not so much in the plants, bugs, and birds he kept pointing our way…[Ed. Note: “My birdwatching clients would be amazed that we are seeing this” is a phrase I didn’t export Morris to use, but I was looking for lemurs.]

No worry, we apparently have some good karma in our midst to make up for the medicine debacle and started our hike out finding lemurs along the side of the road (which was actually a kilometer into the hike because the bridge was still washed out but the forest reopened today for the first time since the cyclone…)  [Ed. note: “bridge out” really means “one of the 15 ‘bridges’ on this dirt road hadn’t been rebuilt yet.”  And by ‘bridge’ we mean “wooden planks or strong bamboo poles across the multitude of streams.”] Unfortunately, the Boy and I apparently forgot how to use our camera during the “boring year” which was 2016 because every photo of this red bellied lemur is blurry and out of focus…[Ed. Note: oops.]

Morris caught on to our desires and instead of pointing out the rare birds in flight, he took us “off road” through the rainforest, shouting “head” or “stump” to protect the Boy from beaning himself or me from falling (it didn’t help…) as we tracked the lemurs.  [Ed. note: Off-road in the rainforest takes on a special meaning. No trails, giant plants and vines everywhere, even a fallen tree to cross the stream!]  

Throughout this adventure, we did manage to locate many types of lemurs, including my personal favorite: the sloth.   I don’t know what kind of trip scientists and Kristen Bell are trying to pull on us, but you cannot look at this face and tell me this isn’t a skinny sloth, right?! [Ed. note: not a sloth. A type of cuddly lemur called a sifaka.  The dancing variety, actually.]

Our time with Morris was not limited to the treacherous jungle hike, we rejoined him after dark in another forest for some nocturnal lemur sightings.  As we were kitted up once again in our hiking boots and 100% deet bug spray, Morris wore flip flops.  Yes, he was prepared to cover the wet and treacherous ground for an hour in the dark essentially bare foot.  We looked like Boy Scouts over-prepared to earn their first badge and badly needed to save face here.   Luckily, the Boy morphed into a lemur spotting savant.  Morris said it was his height giving him the advantage (there was over a foot difference…) but I think he was embarrassed that Boy found 3 fluffy lemur for every one big chameleon or spider Morris found us. [Ed. note: what can I say? I like to find lemurs!]  The lemurs in the dark are not as funny as their daytime kin, leaping branch to branch, but they are much lower down in the trees so you don’t end up with a crook in your neck from staring straight up for an hour or two non-stop!