A is for Aye Aye!
Hello! Welcome to my first post on the A-Z challenge, slightly late!
The first endangered animal this time is the aye-aye – oh, how cute they are!
Aye-ayes are a type of lemur. They live in rain and dry forests, mangroves and bamboo thickets in Madagascar. They are the largest nocturnal primate, and also the only primate to use echolocation, like a bat. They knock their fingers on branches and from the noise echoing back can tell where there are grubs to eat.
They have the most piercing yellow eyes, and look extremely like gremlins, or maybe gremlins look extremely like aye-ayes!
The most unusual thing about their appearance are their incredibly long, thin middle fingers. They use these to dig out the grubs from their hiding places under the bark.
Reflections of an Aye-Aye
Ay, ay – is that me?
It’s worse than I feared,
I’m clearly a freak,
I’m spooky, I’m weird!
My, my are those ears?
So spoon-like and hairy!
My eyes, eyes are yellow
and scarily starey.
I, I knew with these fingers,
I’d never find gloves,
but ay, ay this face –
means I’ll never find love!
Liz Brownlee
Looking forward to tomorrow! Thank you Arlee Bird for starting this wonderful April challenge!
All content © Liz Brownlee
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- Posted in: A-Z Challenge 2013
- Tagged: animals, art, aye-aye, endangered animals, nature, poetry
lizbrownlee - poet 
I like eyes eyes!!! 🙂
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Thank you Celia! I’m not sure I have as much energy as last year as I’m not too well at the minute, but I’m hoping to get there!
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Lovely to see you doing challenge again. Looking forward to reading your a to z.
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Hello Amy, lovely to see you, too! Are you doing it as well? Please give me your number if so! Lx
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Hi Liz! The other TB Liz here. I shall look forward to your lovely poems to brighten my month.
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What a wonderful way to start. I remember a campaign for saving a particular species of Aye Aye when our children were small.
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Hello Ann! There’s only one aye-aye, it’s unique, but there are lots of lemurs, and they are fabulously beautiful. I like the aye-aye best because it has such an lovably-freaky face!
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What a great subject to start the A – Z challenge; I love the poem and I love aye-ayes, they definitely have the cute factor. I went to a zoo a couple of years ago where they have ‘Lemur Encounters’, a large enclosed area where visitors can walk among the lemurs and stay as long as they want, it was great to watch them playing and get close to them.
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Thanks, Eunice… Madagascar holds such unique and wonderful animals. you can walk among the ring-tailed lemurs at Bristol Zoo, near where I live.
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