This will be my third close encounter with the lemurs. Before starting work in the garden, I brought the lettuce from my organic vegetable plot at school to the kitchen, where I could take the compost back to feed our worms. However, before I could even pick up the bucket, one of the techs asked,
“Do you want to see the aye-ayes?"
I had seen pictures of them (I think I explained them to my grandmother as bug-eyed, bald raccoons with beaver teeth and big cat ears), but I had never seen one up close. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
The tech armed me with a red headband light and blue gloves. Aye-ayes are nocturnal creatures, so they are kept in dark enclosures in two wings at the Lemur Center. We started out by meeting a smaller aye-aye. She was small for her size, but she started scratching on the door when she heard us getting ready.
As soon as the tech opened the door, her curious nose was past the threshold. We lured her back inside with a White Oak acorn, which I got to feed to her. She clung to the bamboo jungle gym-looking structure and looked at me curiously. We tried giving her sweet potatoes, but she’d just throw them to the side in search for more acorns. She was sharp.
The tech later gave her food by letting her use her long finger and her sharp front teeth to break through the bag, much like she would to a tree branch to look for food in the wild. The Lemur Center does their best to provide food to the lemurs and other primates in a way that is similar to how they would get it in the wild.
I got to meet more aye-ayes, as well as two pygmy slow lori, who were very shy, and two slow lori, which were right up in my face even after I learned their saliva is poisonous.
Aye-ayes are odd, almost scary-looking, primates, but most pictures of them are misleading because they are lit up by a flash. All you see in the dark are red eyes and a little lumbering body. However, they are quite docile and sweet, and very curious, despite the scary names (Nosferatu, Mephistopheles, Bellatrix, Norman Bates, etc.) they have.
I must say I am very proud to have the opportunity to be the garden manager and work toward providing fresh food to the lemurs and other primates at the center. While I already love the primates at the center, seeing them up close and personal puts into perspective how amazing and fragile they are. If you would like to visit the duke Lemur Center for yourself, please visit the Duke Lemur Center Tours page.
