The AYE AYE LEMUR!!!!
As I started the trend back in may, of animal months, I decided to keep up with it and look up creepy June-appropriate bat-looking creatures (there is no logic behind this statement). I thought it would be cool to make June "Batman's Cave Month" combining my love of superhero comic books (HIDDEN GEEK ALERT) with stalactite/stalagmite crystals. Imagine Bermuda. Now imagine a beautiful, dark, natural crystal cave with water puddles and sharp crystal protrusions. That's an image straight out of my childhood, mang(s)!
This Gollum-like creature takes the cake though. Don't call him ugly, he's just scraggly, tiny, rat-like, and has the heeby-jeebiest of all bulging fluorescent green eyes. A rat? nay! A bat? nay! This rainforest-dwelling creeper hails from MADAGASCAR, so it's as cool as any cartoon like character shaking it's behind and singing "i like to move it, move it".
On a more awesome note, according to trustworthy site Wikipedia.com, the Aye-aye is "often viewed as a harbinger of evil and killed on sight. Others believe that should one point its long middle finger at you, you were condemned to death. Some say the appearance of an Aye-aye in a village predicts the death of a villager, and the only way to prevent this is to kill the Aye-aye. The Sakalava people go so far as to claim Aye-ayes sneak into houses through the thatched roofs and murder the sleeping occupants by using their middle finger to puncture the victim's aorta.[5]"
Can I just say that any animal who knows how to point its long middle finger at you must be pretty BADASS. What a rebel!
In all honesty, I just stumbled upon this little guy and... He spooks me!
More completely reference-worthy facts from wiki-what!: "the name was also hypothesized to be of European origin, with a European observer overhearing an exclamation of fear and surprise ("aiee!-aiee!") by Malagasy who encountered it. However, the name exists in remote villages, so it is unlikely to be of European origins. Another hypothesis is that it derives from "heh heh," which is Malagasy for, "I don't know." If correct, then the name might have originated from Malagasy people saying "heh heh" to Europeans in order to avoid saying the name of a feared, magical animal"
FEARED. MAGIC. ANIMAL. Aiee! aiee! I think that about sums up everything I've been looking for in an animal friend.
Heh-heh,
Kimberley
