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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