aye-aye's are awesome

so - just to prove what a strange little lass the arwen has been since, well, birth, i am going to divulge another odd arwen animal story. When I was in 5th grade, we needed to choose an animal for a project that included a written report and an oral presentation. we probably had to practice our 'making an outline' skills for the paper as well.... (seems like we spent SO much time making outlines in 5th and 6th grade...) anyway... most people chose things like, oh, i don't know... horses. cats. maybe there was an elephant and a tiger. things like that. arwen chose the aye-aye. what? what the hell is an aye-aye? how did she find this here aye-aye? ok. get this... the encyclopedia. totally. she couldn't get over the fact that the encyclopedia told her that there were only about 50 left in the world. what? 50? how can this be? and all on this zany island nation called Madagascar. they are definitely pretty high up there on the weird list. check out the batty bat ears. the patchy hair. the creepy long middle finger. good stuff. totally fuzzy cuddly bunny stuff, right? ;) well anyway. i still think they are pretty awesome. they have really extraordinary hearing so that they can locate grubs in tree branches. once located, they use their overgrown beaver teeth to rip open the bark of the branch and then use that spindly weird-ass middle finger to shove in the hole and spear the grubs. i mean, isn't that awesome?!?!??!?! mother nature, folks. she's something else. (sadly, the people on madagascar think they are evil spirits/angry, dead family members returning to do bad stuff and so they kill them on sight. hence, 50 left. it was actually believed for a few years that they were extinct. thankfully, that was incorrect. although now there could still be about 50 left, but they just say that the count is 'unknown'.)

so please check out this amazing story regarding an aye-aye bred in captivity (their mating issues are pretty wacky too): aye-aye story

the video is also pretty cute. i mean, if you like wacky little aye-aye type things. which you should. look at this little guy!



and this one!!!