Rysearch

I was out walking late the other night and almost literally stumbled over my new writing partner. Actually I think I tripped over the curb, but it was like 2 in the morning and he was lying on the sidewalk all alone, hadn’t been there more than a few minutes. I picked him up and dusted him off and he came home with me.

This is Ringo… he’s a very rare tail-less lemur. (I can’t find what he actually is supposed to be, and the face markings are basically lemur-ish, so we’re going with it.)

Update: 1 January 2019 

My instagram feed a few days ago included a photograph of a critter who’s a dead likeness of Mr. Ringo (except for the whole “being alive” thing, of course.)  It turns out Mr. Ringo is, most likely, a three-toed sloth, which means he might well hail from the Cloud Forests of the High Ecuadoran Andes, just west of Quito.  Now, as it happens, I’ve been through that area on three occasions (though we didn’t get to spend much time there as we were on a photojournalistic trek rather than a natural history one…), and count it as close to home as my wayward wandering soul is ever likely to find…

There’s a question in my mind as to how an Ecuadoran Cloud Forest Sloth wound up on the sidewalks of Houston at two in the morning, but there’s also a question of how an itinerant photographer from Houston wound up with a soul that wants to live in the Ecuadoran Cloud Forests, and was there to rescue him, so I suppose we’ll have to write some stories and see how these things came to pass.

Now you might think that having a sloth for a writing partner would be iffy, at best, but I think it suits me perfectly. Sloths are in fact very good at living in their environment and somewhat fastidious as well, both traits in which I could use a few lessons.

So… My Tribe grows.

He likes to tell stories, and his actual home has many, some of which I wish to tell as well. You WILL be hearing from us.

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Well, sort of. Not dead yet, anyway, and being informed by writing coaches and colleagues in no uncertain terms that I should be publishing more words (unspoken: And fewer photos) I’m thinking about it. And I can post them here without risk of anyone actually seeing them.

So, as stated, I’m thinking about it. Sort of.

Thanks to … I don’t know what, exactly…. I was informed by my hosting company that the backside of this blog had been infected with some sort of malware, despite it having not been used in almost a year.   Interestingly enough, the files were apparently compromised over a year ago, because the backups were bad, too.  In order to regain access to my other blog, my website, and The Other Texas, I simply nuked the blog.  (I seriously considered cancelling all of these, but I need the presence for now.)

Most amazingly, shortly after I was informed that my website was compromised, I received an email from my hosting company advising me that – surprise, surprise – they’d just this week partnered with a service that would, for a hundred bucks a year, keep track of the backend files on my blogs and let me know if they were compromised again – or, for close to five hundred a year, they’d back them up and help me FIX them.

“Nice website… shame if something were to happen to it…”

I’m sure they’re not like that.

So it’s now reinstalled as minimally as possible, just in case I get the urge to write something and publish it here.  It might happen; as I get older I get crankier and more wordy.

On the other hand I also get more private, more cynical (I think that’s still possible) and less inclined to want to bother trying to discuss things with people.

If I hit the lottery the FIRST thing I do is wipe out my internet presence.