Oliver “Mister” Lemur is a ring-tailed lemur from Ranomafana National Park in southeastern Madagascar. In addition to playing the bass, Mister Lemur is an accomplished author. He came to the US as a very young lemur after accidentally stowing away on a ship while vacationing in the port town of Toliara on the southwestern coast of Madagascar. He hid aboard the ship during an intense game of hide-and-go-seek, and the ship set sail before he came out of hiding. In addition to speaking Lemur, Mister Lemur speaks Malagasy (the language of Madagascar natives), English and some French.
He is very thoughtful, rational and even keeled. The makes him a stabilizing force in the band to balance the slightly manic Silky and the wild, crazy and fairly un-cultured Numbat. Mister Lemur is the glue of The Scheming Lemurs and the sane voice when things get crazy.
We asked him to fill out the following questionnaire so you could get to know him better:
Favorite Saying(s): “I’m just not that worried about it.” “Today’s going to be a GREAT day!”
Favorite Outfit: Overalls. You know I’m too tired when I put them on inside out beneath my underwear.
Peculiar Things About You? I speak in rhyme… much of the time… I love music but I do not sing that well… Things often happen to my long tail.
Biggest Weakness: food
Favorite Foods: bananas. I also like to eat flowers, but that can be a problem for me since I sometimes (embarrassingly) eat flowers from vases in people’s homes and restaurants. That can be dangerous, because I sometimes eat fake (plastic) flowers. You can imagine how THOSE taste!
Biggest Strength: I’m a really good writer. I started writing when I was an accidental stow-away and I had a lot of time on a ship. With practice and some good instruction from other writers I became quite good.
Second Language: French
What motivates you? Why do you do what you do? I want to be the best writer since Dr. Seuss. I want to see the world and share it with people who do not have a chance to travel as much as I do.
What is your greatest frustration as a writer? I love kids and animals, but I am skeptical of some grown-ups. Some adults don’t treat me as a serious writer because I am a lemur. They say things like, “Why don’t you write books for other lemurs? We already have lots of people that write books for people.” I really dislike hearing that, but it motivates me to write great stuff and be the best lemur writer ever!
Where do you live? With my parents and sister in our house on Ringtail Lane in Ranomafana.
How did you become a writer? I accidentally came to the U.S. as a very young lemur. I was on vacation with my family in the port town of Toliara on the southwestern coast of Madagascar. I was playing hide-and-go-seek with a bunch of other lemurs and I found a great hiding place aboard a ship in the harbor. Lemurs have great noses and great ears, so we take these games very seriously. I fell asleep during one of these games, and I didn’t wake up until the ship was sailing full speed out to sea. I was afraid I would get in trouble for being on the ship, so I stayed hiding, only coming out at night to eat left-over food from the kitchen. I got pretty bored in hiding, so I found an old journal one night and began to write to keep myself entertained. I don’t know how many days we were at sea, but it must have been four or five weeks. Maybe more. I had never been on a boat before, so I didn’t realize how far we had gone. It turns out that ship had gone a LONG way.
Eventually this ship docked in California in the port of Oakland, though I didn’t realize where I was at the time. I didn’t know anything of the world outside Madagascar, so I figured I was just on the west coast of Madagascar. I could tell from the position of the sun that I was north of Toliara, but I had no idea I was on the west coast of a continent half way around the world.
Anyway, I then snuck into the luggage compartment of a southbound bus hoping it would take me home. I was discovered at a stop in Monterey, a couple hours south of Oakland. The driver saw my ring tail sticking out from behind a suitcase and mistook me for a raccoon. The driver then chased me out of the luggage section with a broom. It was really embarrassing and scary at the same time.
At that point I saw that I was near a beach and thought I might be close to where I had set sail. I walked south for hours, eventually reaching Carmel. I was exhausted by then, so, being a lemur, I climbed a tree and fell asleep. A family of raccoons woke me up a couple hours later. They saw my ring tail and heard my French accent and thought I was a long lost cousin. They gave me food and shelter.
However, at this age, I spoke only Lemur and French, and could not communicate with the raccoons. They saw that I carried a journal full of notes and stories in French, though they could not read them.
One of the raccoons’ favorite restaurants in town was the garbage can of a retired French teacher and her writer husband. One of the older raccoons said, “Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Branner will know what to do with this French speaking writer.”
I was still pretty weary at that point, so that night, the mother raccoon put me on her back and carried me (and my journal) to the couple’s front door. She then set me down, rang the doorbell, and scampered into the bushes.
Mrs. Branner opened the door and saw me, small and scared and cold and helpless, and immediately took me inside. She wrapped me in a blanket and gave me a bottle of warm milk. It was dark outside, and she didn’t see my journal by the door.
The Branners were recently retired and they were excited to travel the world, so they knew they could not keep me. But for one night, they give me a warm bed and I was just happy to be someplace that felt safe.
The next morning they picked up my blanket and put me in an open shoe-box. It wasn’t much of a new home, but I figured I would get used to it.
Instead, the Branners promptly carried me and my shoe-box out the door to take me to the pound. On the way out, Mrs. Branner noticed my journal on the ground and she bent over to pick it up. I was very excited at the prospect of being reunited with that journal. She said, “My, what odd things we find outside our door these days!”
As she stopped to pick it up, Mr. Branner said, “Come on, we’re going to be late,” but she grabbed the journal anyway and put it in her pocket… then she promptly forgot about it.
They took me to something called animal control, which was basically the pound. The people at the pound told the couple they would keep me in a cage for a week, and if anyone reported they had lost a lemur they would return me to that family. If not, they would see if the local zoo needed another lemur, otherwise…
He didn’t say what the “otherwise” was, but I knew it would not end well, and Mrs. Branner seemed to know that as well. I later learned that the zoo had no budget and since I had no collar, I was in a very sticky situation.
When Mrs. Branner got home and reached in her pocket for her reading glasses she found the notebook tucked inside. Curious, she made a cup of chamomile tea and put on her reading glasses. She was surprised to find French writing inside. The handwriting was small, and it was choppy, like it had been written in a bumpy car or a rocking boat.
Mrs. Branner started reading and was absorbed by the story inside. It was written in a child’s handwriting and had many spelling and grammar mistakes, but the story was moving and the writing style (much of it rhyming) showed a writer with real talent.
She quickly pieced things together and the couple rushed back to the shelter to retrieve me.
Mrs. Branner gave me my journal and a small pen, and we began to communicate. I wrote that my name was Oliver Lemur, but most people called me Mister Lemur. I told her I wanted to be a writer someday, but right then, what i really wanted to was to go home to see my family in Ranomafana.
The Branners were going to be leaving on a trip in 6 months, then they would be traveling for another 5 months, getting to Africa near the end of the trip. They said that if I would stay with them until the trip, they would help me develop my writing skills, then take me back to Ranomafana. They also said that they were going to 7 other countries first, and that I would have to come with them on the adventures before I could get to Ranomafana.
This story is already getting pretty long, so I won’t go into too much more detail, but I got a lot of instruction from The Branners over the next 11 months, and that launched me into my writing career. So as scary as my accidental stow-away experience was, it sparked my interest in world travel and brought some wonderful people into my life.