Years ago, when my wife was still my girlfriend, she called me on the verge of tears. While unpacking boxes at her giant corporate bookstore, she discovered a small ringtailed lemur nestled into the day’s shipment. After checking all the requisite manifests, she was certain no one had ordered a lemur. The lemur, for his part, said he had set off from the spiny forests of southern Madagascar in search of adventure. She pleaded, “can I keep him?”
So it was that I met Thievey. He had been so named because, after paying his steerage, my wife’s frienemy — that is, a friend in name who is an enemy in practice — claimed that she had ordered the lemur and that my wife had stolen him. As far as the bookstore and the lemur were concerned, he was going home with my wife and her frienemy could order a new lemur. In honor of that bit of drama, my wife named the lemur Thievey.
When I travel alone, tough as I am, I start to miss my wife. Since I usually travel on business, I’m pretty busy and might not even get to iChat. As such, I like to bring one of my wife’s several dozen lemurs to keep me company. As he’s always up for adventure, I usually bring Thievey.
This past November I had to fly to San Diego for my dad’s wedding, then straight to Cupertino for the aforementioned Leopard kitchen. Thievey came along and suggested I use my iPhone to keep my wife up on his big adventure. I sent her a picture of Thievey each day I was away and, going through iPhoto, realized they were too cute not to share.
Thievey, being a lemur with a heart for adventure, has no trouble sleeping on planes. Indeed, we were not even off the ground in Seattle before he conked right out.You’ll notice he carries two items, a small round tag, as well as a small book about lemurs. According to Thievey, the lemurs depicted thereon are him and his mother.
Thievey absolutely loves hotel rooms. He loves to put on a robe and kick back with the remote. We don’t have cable at home, so he doesn’t usually get to watch TV.
His favorite show? All of them!
You might be wondering why Thievey didn’t have a name when my wife found him. I asked him about that myself.He said that in his troop, you don’t get a name when you’re born. Instead, you have to earn a name.
I suppose that makes a certain kind of sense. Although ringtailed lemurs only give birth to one or two babies at a time, and only once a year, infant mortality is high.
Even in Berenty, where Thievey is from, a baby ringtailed lemur only has a 50-50 chance of making it through its first year.
I was the best man in my father’s wedding, which was a very small private ceremony at a Hawaiian-themed hotel in San Diego, where he and his wife live.They got married the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and I didn’t get in until late Friday night. As such, I didn’t have a chance to get any adjustments made to my tux.
I had a bit of a panic when it seemed they had forgotten to include my bow tie. After searching high and low, it turned out Thievey had picked it up off the bed and tried it on.
I have to admit, he wears it well.
After the ceremony, we headed back to my dad’s house. My dad has done the same thing as Wil: converted much of his yard into a little garden. My dad turns out to have quite the green thumb. He constantly tells me about his peach tree, which yields so much fruit he doesn’t know what to do with it.
Sadly, there was no fruit left for sampling by the end of November, but by my great good fortune, some of the bumper crop had been turned into a fantastic peach sorbet.
Thievey had a bowl, declared it be the best thing he’d ever eaten, then asked if I was going to finish mine.
For our last night in San Diego, we checked out of the Hawaiian hotel and into a much nicer hotel. Being away from the ocean, it was apparently a lot cheaper too. Go figure.Thievey was in heaven. Aside from the fact they gave him a bottle of water and a full-sized Snickers bar, they also gave him a little red pillow to sit on.
I may never know such pleasure as Thievey got out of sitting on his little red pillow. He just kept going on and on about how great the hotel was, and how they really knew how to treat a lemur. Clearly, a fan for life.
The hotel had an obsession with helping you, the guest, get a good night’s sleep.They even provided a whole sleep kit, with one of those little sleep masks and ear plugs, a clip to keep even a sliver of light from getting past the drapes, a little bottle of lavender scented aromatherapy spray for the bedding, and a CD of a sleep specialist instructing you on how to relax your mind and body for a great night’s sleep.
I have to admit, I slept like a baby. Thievey, for his part, slept like a lemur. Oh, a spoiled rotten lemur sure, but a lemur nonetheless.
Oh, and he got his own bed. He made a huge deal out of this. Apparently I thrash around a lot in my sleep.Still, I’m not saying the lemur doesn’t deserve his own bed, but let’s be honest: does he really need all those pillows? He’s not even using them.
I tried to explain that the pillows were decorative, and you were supposed to throw them on the floor while you slept. He looked at me like I was insane and rolled those little orange eyes of his.
Let me tell you, you’ve never had eyes rolled at you until you’ve had a lemur’s eyes rolled at you.
My brother-in-law is from the east coast, so he’d never eaten at California’s famed In-n-Out burger.Thievey found my double-double and fries, both done up animal style, to be a bit much.
He did relieve me of most of my root beer float, however. That lemur has a sweet tooth.
San Diego is also home to the appropriately named Chicken Pie Shop. For something like five bucks you get a chicken pie with mashed potatoes and vegetables, all covered in gravy, plus a drink and a slice of pie... that’ll kill ya.I admit, it doesn’t look like much, but it’s some damn good eats. I mean, look at Thievey grinning ear to ear. Clearly this was much more to his liking.
Even though that pie is bigger than his head, I swear he ate more than half of it. Oh, but he left me all the vegetables. Yeah, thanks, Thievey. Your sacrifice is truly remarkable.
Our time in sunny San Diego having come to an end, we hopped on our third regional jet for the quick hop to San Jose.This photo cracks me up because Thievey is all up in my face, but what really kills me is how amused the ramp service agent is in the background.
That Thievey, he’s a laugh riot.
I love this picture for two reasons.Yes, Thievey looks really wistful bidding San Diego good-bye. It was his first time in southern California, and he had a really good time.
What you don’t know is, right before I took this picture, I told him we were staying in the Cupertino Inn, quite possibly his favorite hotel.
When we get there, he told me, I’m going to roll around around in the amenities.
So, looking at this picture I wonder, is he thinking “good-bye San Diego,” or “hello amenities”?
You might be tempted to believe that he’s joking when he says he’s planning on rolling around in the amenities. You would be wrong. He’s dead serious.He looks very grandiose in this picture, like he’s saying, I’m Lord Thievey, master of amenities. If he missed his little red pillow, he’s clearly over it.
I spent a week in Cupertino and he never left the hotel room. Oh, he claimed he was going to catch a cab and see the sights. Look, he’d say. I’m reading up on what to do in Cupertino right now.I was not fooled by this. I know for a fact that there’s nothing to do in Cupertino but code and drink.
And, apparently, eat candy. This little candy bowl, which probably contains 47 cents worth of assorted hard candies, means more to Thievey than all the little red pillows in the world.In Madagascar, ringtailed lemurs mainly live on tamarinds, though the lemurs at Berenty augment their tamarind supply by begging tourists for bits of banana.
Lemurs in general are also quite fond of grapes. Hard candy? Honestly, I have no idea, but to this little lemur, there’s nothing finer.
I currently have this picture set as the background on my iPhone.
And just like that, it was time to leave Cupertino. With the candy dish reduced to a pile of wrappers, Thievey was ready to go home, and so was I.Here Thievey sits waiting for our flight home from San Jose, just a little lemur with a heart full of adventure, a love for hotel room amenities, and a particular fondness for candy.
Thievey often writes home with stories of his adventures, but this is the first time he’s had the pictures to prove it. It’s proven effective — a number of lemurs from his original troop have begun craving adventures of their own.
That brings us to the present. This year I’ve talked to anyone who would listen about Madagascar and the few surviving lemurs, as well as the mission of the Madagascar Fauna Group. It brings indescribable joy to my heart to have someone I’ve never met before tell me that, after reading Dinosaur Ranch or some of my other ramblings, they were moved to make a donation to help lemurs like Thievey.
I’ve been thinking for a while about how to say thank you to all those people, and maybe encourage some people who are still holding their hands above their wallets to take the plunge and get involved with making a real difference in this often dismal world. Upon hearing from several of Thievey’s relatives, I’ve hatched a plan that even I am not convinced is completely sane.
What I propose is this: if you’ve donated $100 or more to the Madagascar Fauna Group this year, I will personally foot the bill to send one of Thievey’s family members to live with you. All you have to do is send me the confirmation email from your donation, as well as your mailing address and phone number for shipping purposes. Don’t worry — I won’t share that information with anyone not directly involved with shipping you a small ringtailed lemur.
If you’ve been holding off on giving, I’ll go ahead and extend this offer through the end of the year, which is coming up pretty damned soon. Since donations to the Madagascar Fauna Group are tax-deductible, it makes sense to give now. If you use an online payment method, the donation counts for this year’s taxes, even if you don’t pay your credit card off until next month.
If you’ve donated less than $100 — which is fine; when it comes to Madagascar literally every dollar counts — you can make a second donation for the difference and send me both receipts. If you live outside of the United States, you can convert the figure to your local currency. I’m going to go ahead and the eat the international shipping costs, though, so by all means, don’t be afraid to give a little bit more.
As far as the cost of keeping a lemur, don’t worry about it. Thievey’s troop is a very independent lot. They do a pretty good job of taking care of themselves, including scrounging up meals and cleaning up. All they need is some love and a little adventure once in a while. Oh, and a name. Don’t forget to give your new lemur a name.
Finally, I’d like to assemble a photo album of all Thievey’s relatives, so after you get your new lemur, make sure to take a snap or three and send it along. You can put yourself in the picture at your option. If you’d rather remain anonymous, let me know, and I’ll just list your lemur’s name and where abouts you live. I’m calling this public display of affection Club Thievey.
To facilitate this, I’m setting up an email account. Write to thievey at atomicwang dot org. Be sure to spell it right — there are a lot of tricky vowels in there, and misaddressed email to this domain gets destroyed without intervention or notice.
But wait! You might be thinking, “Mike, this is all well and good, but, dude, I just spent myself into the poor house for Christmas. I literally cannot afford to drop $100. As much as I’d love to support your cause and join Club Thievey, I just can’t do it right now.” You know what? That’s fair. I understand that.
Because I care about this so much, and am not an unreasonable man, I offer you an alternate proposal that literally anyone can afford. The Madagascar Fauna Group has set up the ability to make recurring payments. As such, you may also finance your lemur by setting up a monthly recurring payment of $10 or more.
As long as you promise, scout’s honor, to make that payment every month next year, I will still put you in Club Thievey, and send you a lemur on spec! That’s right, kids, I’m practically giving these lemurs away. Call me crazy, but that’s just how much I care. Just click on the delightful banner below, complete the donation enrollment, and send me your info.
Thievey is a little lemur with a heart for adventure. He also has several relatives who would love to be your new traveling companion.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Meet Thievey
