Path:!faqserv From: "Joel K. Furr" Newsgroups:,alt.answers,news.answers Subject: Frinkquently Asked Questions (Part 1 of 7, Lemur Humor Part One) Supersedes: Followup-To: Date: 21 Jun 1995 11:18:40 GMT Organization: none Lines: 802 Approved: Expires: 14 Jul 1995 11:17:50 GMT Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: Summary: This posting contains a list of Frequently Asked Questions (and the best answers we got) about Lemurs. It should be read by anyone who wishes to post to the newsgroup. X-Last-Updated: 1995/02/08 Originator: faqserv@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU Xref: alt.answers:10106 news.answers:46769 Archive-name: lemur-faq/part1 Alt-fan-lemurs-archive-name: lemur-faq/part1 Last-modified: 1994/08/02 Version: 4.0 Frinkquently Asked Questions This is the famous newsgroup, the newsgroup that celebrates the legend, lore, and humor of Madagascar's most famous animals. Lemur discussion began in 1991 on a small local campus conferencing system at Virginia Tech, spread to a few USENET news- groups, and acquired its own newsgroup in Fall 1992. Sections of the FAQ include: Part 1 of 7 -- Lemur Humor Part One Part 2 of 7 -- Lemur Humor Part Two Part 3 of 7 -- Lemur Humor Part Three Part 4 of 7 -- Lemurs Versus Cows Part 5 of 7 -- Lemurs and the USENET Oracle Part 6 of 7 -- Duke University Primate Center Part 7 of 7 -- Real Lemur Facts The old Lemur Poetry section of the FAQ is being redeveloped as an archive and will be posted at a later date. Official USENET Alt.Fan.Lemurs Frinkquently Asked Questions Part 1 of 7 -- Lemur Humor Part One ------------------------------ The Questions (1) Um, this newsgroup seems to have a somewhat unusual view of Lemurs. According to you, what IS a Lemur? (2) What kinds of sounds do Lemurs make? (3) Are Lemur eyes really all that big? (4) What do Lemurs do when the weather turns cold? (5) What do Lemurs like to eat? (6) Who is Nigel the Lemur? (7) Who is Rudolpho the Christmas Lemur? (8) Who are the other Lemurs? (9) What's this I hear about a song called "Shock the Lemur?" (10) What is "Lemur-B-Gon"? (11) Does Lemur-B-Gon _work_? (12) What do I do if I'm out driving and I come to a roadblock where Lemurs are shaking people down for money and Chex Mix? (13) Can you get Lemurs at governmental surplus property auctions? (14) What is the "Lemurcon equation"? (15) What should I do if I meet a Lemur? (16) Were there Lemurs in Star Trek (tm)? (17) Is it unusual to dream about Lemurs? (18) How do Lemurs get into the USA? (19) Are Lemurs controlling the minds of alt.folklore.urban readers, forcing them to insert the word "Lemur" into the keywords lines of their posts? (20) How can you keep your local Lemurs entertained? (21) Have Lemurs appeared in any court cases? (22) How do monkeys compare with Lemurs? (23) Can Lemurs in zoos escape? (24) What do Lemurs in zoos like to eat? (25) If you feed the Lemurs, what's likely to happen? (26) Why did Chris Thompson get committed to a mental hospital? (27) Is it wise to publicly express a fondness for Lemurs over the Internet? (28) What's that "Joey the Lemur, Friend of Mankind" song they did on Mystery Science Theatre 3000? Lemur Humor is continued in Part 2 of the FAQ, "Part 2 of 6 -- Lemur Humor Part Two". --------------- The Answers (1) Um, this newsgroup seems to have a somewhat unusual view of Lemurs. According to you, what IS a Lemur? L-E-M-U-R (le-mer) noun Lemur: a small mammal with large eyes, a foxlike face, and wooly fur, found mainly in Madagascar, Virginia Tech, and in the Twinkie aisle of your local 7-11. There are different kinds of Lemurs, some resembling monkeys, some resem- bling mice and squirrels, and some resembling politi- cians. They live in trees and some are active mainly at night. Others prefer to ride the rides at local theme parks. They are probably similar to an ancestor of the primates, meaning even Lemurs have a little bit of Elvis in them. I was at the zoo one day, standing looking at the lemur cage. The >lemurs were going wild jumping around and frinking loudly. I >noticed one of the lemurs (He looked to be a lemur leader) had >Mr. Underhill's American express card and was trying to jimmy the >lock to the cage. I was unsure of their problem. It was then that >I noticed they were being fed big bowls of dry crusty Lemur Chow, >and this little kid was standing next to me EATING A TWINKIE!!! > >I immediately slapped the twinke to the ground, picked it up and >tossed it into the cage. I turned to the kid and yelled "MY GOD >MAN! WHAT DID YOU THINK YOU WERE DOING!?! ONE OF THEM HAS A >CREDIT CARD!!" then, to the lemurs "I'll BE RIGHT BACK WITH SOME >BIG-K!!" > >After the cops released me from psychiatric lockup, I did go back >and slide a couple of two liters of Big K Grape and a case of >twinkies under the cage. > >The Lemur Leader saw me and came over. I looked at him and said >"Frink." Somehow I got the intonation right because he looked at >me and nodded sagely and said "Ptang." ----------- (27) Is it wise to publicly express a fondness for Lemurs over the Internet? After Joel Furr said "I'd like to hug a Lemur," Robert O'Brien spoke up: Careful! The ones that sometimes hang around my patio and read the screen thru the window and over my shoul- der were here again tonight, and after your message scrolled by I heard them making chattering type noises for a while, then they all took off toward the phone lines - they *may* know how to track down your ad- dress. (28) What's that "Joey the Lemur, Friend of Mankind" song they did on Mystery Science Theatre 3000? JOEY THE LEMUR Tom Servo: It's Joey the Lemur, the friend to Mankind, our furry sort of monkey friend who really does shine Joel: It's Joey the Lemur, he's really fun to have around to huggle and to talk to and fun fun fun [note: Joel appears to be whacked out on goof- balls, we couldn't get a better translation than this.] Crow: Joey the Lemur, he'll run everywhere, Joey the Lemur, what kind of heck of animal is he any- way?! Uh... Joey the Lemur, the kind of animal that would go to the bathroom anywhere. Joel: Wait a minute, hold it! Crow: Huh? There's more! Joel: This is the Lemur. Native to the Philippines and Madagascar, uh... and fictional planets like Nova. He is a clean, gregarious, and good pet. Joey the Lemur: You said it, pal! Oh boy, pal of mine, you're the one for me! Tom Servo: Uh oh, Joel's swinging into his puppet routine! Joey the Lemur: Can it, fireplug! I've had enough out of you! Tom Servo: Joey the Lemur, he'll say what he thinks! Joey the Lemur: I've got a story to tell! Oh boy, will I ever, I'll carry on like a Gilbert Gottfried of the animal world, I don't mind telling you. You know, I'm the clown prince of the primate world who's often mistaken for our friend the chimpan- zee. But don't make any mistake, I'm not saying anything wrong about our chimpanzee brethren, only that I wish.... here's wishing they'd throw a little more work our way, alright? Crow: Lemur, the Lemur, L-E-M-U-R. Joey the Lemur: Hey, who's this bird-dog-thing, I don't like him! Tom Servo: L is for Lemur! Joey the Lemur: L is for Lemur, 'nuff said! Crow: E is for EAT! Joey the Lemur: E is for eat. I eat four times my own weight in nuts and berries, which has its consequences, but go figure! Crow: M is for MONKEY! Joey the Lemur: Monkey. I'm often mistaken for a monkey. It goes with the turf, let's go! Tom Servo: U is for UNUSUAL! Crow: And UNPREDICTABLE! Joey the Lemur: Unpredictable is right! I once took a whiz on Johnny Carson's sportcoat-- I don't panel well. Okay, on with the show! Tom Servo: R is for RADICAL! Crow: And RAMBUNCTIOUS! Joey the Lemur: Randy as a jackrabbit, that's me alright! Whoooooo! Tom Servo: Yes, it's the splendiferous Lemur.... Crow: ...friend to all Mankind! Joey the Lemur: Please consider me as a possible corporate sym- bol or mascot suitable and fine for any profes- sional or semi-professional sport team. Crow & Tom Servo: It's the Crow: magnificent Tom Servo: splendiferous Crow & Tom Servo: LEEEMURRR!! Joey the Lemur: I, the Lemur, beg you to consider me. I am willing to travel and would make an excellent companion for any elderly or unelderly elderly person. Gentlemen, please consider me. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. --------------- Lemur Humor is continued in Part 2 of the FAQ, "Part 2 of 7 -- Lemur Humor Part Two". ------------------------------------------------------------------ Prepared January 31, 1993 by Joel Furr, Revised February 15, 1993 by Joel Furr, Revised April 5, 1993 by Joel Furr, Revised July 6, 1993 by Joel Furr, Revised August 2, 1994 by Joel Furr, Path:!faqserv From: (Joel K. Furr) Newsgroups:,alt.answers,news.answers Subject: Frinkquently Asked Questions (Part 2 of 7, Lemur Humor Part Two) Supersedes: Followup-To: Date: 21 Jun 1995 11:18:42 GMT Organization: none Lines: 766 Approved: Expires: 14 Jul 1995 11:17:50 GMT Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: Summary: This posting contains a list of Frequently Asked Questions (and the best answers we got) about Lemurs. It should be read by anyone who wishes to post to the newsgroup. X-Last-Updated: 1995/02/08 Originator: faqserv@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU Xref: alt.answers:10107 news.answers:46770 Archive-name: lemur-faq/part2 Alt-fan-lemurs-archive-name: lemur-faq/part2 Last-modified: 1994/08/02 Version: 4.0 Official USENET Alt.Fan.Lemurs Frinkquently Asked Questions Part 2 of 7 -- Lemur Humor Part Two ------------------------------ The Questions (1) Would it be a good idea to give a Lemur a toolbox for his or her birthday? Are Lemurs vocationally skilled? (2) What are Lemurs' tails used for? (3) Are Robert O'Brien's local Lemurs up to something? (4) Why do Lemurs spend so much time trying to get their mitts on credit cards? (5) What's this I hear about a 900 number for Lemurs? (6) Can thinking about Lemurs have positive benefits? (7) What did the late historian and humorist Will Cuppy have to say about lemurs? (8) Did Old McDonald have lemurs on his farm? (9) How can you tell if you have a lemur problem? (10) If a bunch of lemurs infested my dorm room, what would it be like? (11) What if I _wanted_ lemurs around? How would I arrange that? (12) Has anyone actually sat down and talked with an actual lemur? (13) What is the "Lemurata"? (14) What is a Rufous Mouse Lemur? (15) Do lemurs get along with other sorts of animals? Pets, for example? (16) Suppose you were a resident assistant in a college dormitory. And suppose you had lemurs living on your hall. What would that be like? (17) Are there lemurs in, say, Central Europe? (18) What about in England? Any lemurs there? (19) Write a story about lemurs following the Edward Bulwer-Lytton "dark and stormy night" style for me, please? (20) What did Nigel the Lemur do to Dick Depew of ARMM fame? (21) Who is LEMORO? Lemur Humor is continued in Part 3 of the FAQ, "Part 3 of 6 -- Lemur Humor Part Three." ------------------------------ The Answers (1) Would it be a good idea to give a Lemur a toolbox for his or her birthday? Are Lemurs vocationally skilled? No. As Ryan Franklin notes: I do know that it's a bad idea to give a Lemur a toolbox for his or her birthday. Oh yeah, they're really grateful and they thank you profusely for days (mainly by not soiling the carpet), but then one morning you'll wake up and find that same oh-so-grateful Lemur making "just a few improvements" on your car's engine, with about a dozen grease-stained parts of your transmission lying out on the driveway. Wonderful species, nice opposable thumbs, but absolutely NO mechanical aptitude whatso- ever. Definitely not the auto repairmen of the pri- mate world. has heard differing opinions on this question, though. One guy said his car got 100 miles to the gallon after this happened to him and he never missed the leftover parts, but for some reason the radio would only play Radio Antananarivo. Another guy, cursing loudly, said that the car smelled of caramel- ized sugar for weeks after the Lemurs had their way with it. Finally he took it to a garage and found that the Lemurs had left some half-eaten Twinkies inside the trans-mission case (said Twinkies now being extremely inedible, as opposed to slightly inedible). On the other hand, well over 80% of the Lemur population can get a job as a locksmith or as a window washer, according to a recent article in Barron's. This brings them up to #3 on the "Most in Demand" list for the major primate families. Unfortunately, few Lemurs appear to want those jobs, perhaps because they can get all the food they need from nearby vending machines and/or used record stores. Locksmithing would appeal to Lemurs if they stopped to _think_ about it since a locksmith-trained Lemur would be hell on wheels in the vending machine world. Who'd need being able to wriggle into the machine if you could just pop it open and swipe _every- thing_ in one swell foop? Window washing, on the other hand, does not appeal to the Lemurs of our acquaintance. Neither Rudolpho nor Nigel expressed any interest in washing windows. They see windows as necessary evils, shutting out the natural breezes but keeping in the warmth here in countries that aren't warm year-round. ----------- (2) What are Lemurs' tails used for? An excellent question. Ryan Franklin asked: Incidentally, can anyone tell me if a Lemur's tail is partially prehensile? Able to hook on to a branch or ceiling lamp and help stabilize them while they climb and swing and cavort joyfully in the air? I know they have to keep them up in the air while leeming (or else trip themselves), but I was wondering if there was some sort of purpose to their tail other than looking nice. Joel Furr responded: As far as I can tell from this book I checked out called "Lemurs And You," Lemur tails are not prehensile. Instead they use their little paws to cling to things that need clinging to... ceiling lamps, Cindy Crawford, Twinkies, etc... Ryan responded: Hm. Then, apart from looking really nice, what purpose do their tails serve? They seem to be rather inconvenient whilst leeming, as I mentioned before, and even something as simple as being able to use it as a way of stabilizing themselves when climbing or clinging would go a long way towards explaining this prosimian puzzle. David A. Boulton provided the answer: I don't know about Joey, Rudolpho, and other urban, twinkie-addicted Lemurs, but in the wild Lemur tails have at least two purposes that I am aware of. As you guessed, one use is for keeping their balance, sort of like a high-wire walker using a pole. Lemurs (even with those nice opposable thumbs) aren't very good at construct- ing balance poles, so they use their tails to swish around, maintain balance, and prevent their crashing to the ground. Most Lemurs greatly appreciate not crashing to the ground, (not to mention its Darwinian survival value) and over time they evolved large, bushy tails with extra good swishing capability. The other reason to have a very long tail is for inter-Lemur communications while leeming across the ground. Lemurs generally live in social groups. They watch out for one another, and have an advantage against predators if the group stays together. Some act as look-outs while others feed, and so on. When feeding on the ground, especially while moving through tall grass, it's easy to get lost from the group. A long tail acts as a sort of flagpole. You stick your tail in the air, and silently say "Yo! I'm a Lemur, I'm over here, stay with me, and everything will be cool". The absence of Lemur tails in your general vicinity would tell you that you had better leem your butt back to the rest of the troop. This is why ringtails have rings on their tails. It makes them more visible. There is also a theory that the black and white coloration works on the same principle as zebra stripes. Dazzle whatever is chasing you with a sea of bounc- ing/leeming Lemur tails, and maybe he'll miss -- or at least maybe he will miss *you*. Also, and most important of all, Lemur tails look *really* nice. ----------- (3) Are Robert O'Brien's local Lemurs up to something? Robert O'Brien states: I'm really not very good at interpreting what little commu- nication they (the ones that hang out on my patio some nights while I'm logged in) deign to give me, but the way I understand it, the Lemurs are really the natives, *we* are the aliens (rejects, left here by the dominant species on our home-world who were tired of all the *whining*) and the Lemurs have been trying all this time to reactivate the cows' ship and program it to send *us* back, or just about anywhere. But the cover story will be at least as good as the Douglas Adams "B Ark" story, so most of us will be very happy to go... Hmm, I thought they were gone, and it'd be safe to type this, but they're back now, and clearly doing what passes for a Lemur laugh, so I guess I've been taken in again... one born every minute ... You be the judge. ----------- (4) Why do Lemurs spend so much time trying to get their mitts on credit cards? Never give a Lemur a credit card. A checkbook is bad enough, to be honest, but they go seriously wild with credit cards. Not only do baby Lemurs covet them (they open cages like magic if you know how to use them), but they allow you to buy brand-new Burl Ives records in quantity off of late-night TV commercials. ----------- (5) What's this I hear about a 900 number for Lemurs? An ad posted by Daniel Pawtowski reads, "To listen to the exciting call of the wild Lemur, simply call 1-900-465-3687 (that's 1-900-GO-Lemur) for only $4.95 for the first minute, 15.95 each additional minute. Major credit cards accepted. Adults only, no chimpanzees, please." does not vouch for the veracity of this ad. ----------- (6) Can thinking about Lemurs have positive benefits? A quote from Douglas Adams' work _So Long and Thanks For All The Fish_ gives us some hints: [Arthur Dent] tried not to think about the ground, what an extraordinarily big thing it was and how much it would hurt him if it decided to stop hanging there and suddenly fell on him. He tried to think nice thoughts about Lemurs instead, which was exactly the right thing to do because he couldn't at that moment remember precisely what a Lemur was, if it was one of those things that sweep in great majestic herds across the plains of wherever it was or if that was wilde- beests, so it was a tricky kind of thing to think nice thoughts about without simply resorting to an icky sort of general well-disposedness toward things, and all this kept his mind well occupied while his body tried to adjust to the fact that it wasn't touching anything. ----------- (7) What did the late historian and humorist Will Cuppy have to say about lemurs? "The Lemur is one worse than the Monkey. He is often mistaken for a squirrel, a rabbit, an Agouti, or anything but a Lemur. He has been described as a state of mind or ectoplasm. The Lemur is a primate because people say so. The Lemur sleeps all day and nobody tells him that he is a tramp. When disturbed he sort of squeaks. Most Lemurs live in Madagascar, but they are never quite warm enough. ... Lemurs comb their hair with their lower front teeth. They mature almost instantaneously. In a way we came from lemurs because they are also descended from an extinct Tree Shrew something like a large Rat. From the Tree Shrew to the Dogfish is but a step, which practically brings us to the amoeba. So perhaps the lemur is to blame for it all." ----------- (8) Did Old McDonald have lemurs on his farm? Apparently so. >News Flash! > >FARMERSVILLE, Nebraska: Wilga Hansworth never imagined the treasure >hidden in the attic of her farm house in rural Nebraska. After moving >an old chest of drawers, she discovered a set of yellowed and hand- >written sheets of music. Upon examination, the music was found to be >the original and complete source of the song "Old MacDonald". More >significant was the existence of a new verse, long forgotten and >possibly never published: > > Old MacDonald had a farm, ee-aye-ee-aye-o, > and on that farm he had a lemur, ee-aye-ee-aye-o, > with a cheep-cheep here and a frink frink there, > here a cheep, there a frink, everywhere a cheep, frink, > Old MacDonald had a farm, ee-aye-ee-aye-o. > >She is quoted as saying, "I'll be danged if I know what a lemur is." This news clipping comes to us from Jim Kuiper ( --------------- (9) How can you tell if you have a lemur problem? This answer comes to us from Ben Ostrowsky ( >TOP TEN WAYS OF TELLING YOU HAVE A LEMUR PROBLEM >================================================ > >10. Anonymous notes scrawled on napkins, in crayon, and left on the > kitchen table, demand two-liter bottles of Big K grape soda. >9. You wake up every morning only to find your National Geographic > collection scattered all over the floor. >8. Hanging light fixtures begin malfunctioning more often than usual. > Small cracks may appear in the ceiling. >7. All the Twinkies coupons have been torn out of the newspaper and > attached to the refrigerator with magnets. >6. Crude maps of Madagascar are drawn on the bathroom mirror with > deodorant. >5. You wake up in the middle of the night, feeling something hairy > brush across your lips -- and you're single. >4. Lemur-B-Gon billboards in your city or town are often defaced. >3. A fine powder on the floor turns out to be Kool-Aid mix. (Note: > if it's Purplesaurus Rex, don't assume that lemurs are causing > this problem -- it COULD be other small prosimians. Purplesaurus > Rex is a very popular flavor among prosimians.) >2. A resurgence of early 1980's music on your local radio stations. > >And the number one way of telling you have a lemur problem... > >1. Neighbors complain that you yell "frink!" during sex and ask you > to please be more quiet in the future. --------------- (10) If a bunch of lemurs infested my dorm room, what would it be like? Joel Baxter had to suffer through precisely this circumstance: "Since I moved here to California, I've begun to be plagued by in- explicable phenomena. I regularly come back to my room after class to find the door ajar and the television on, tuned to a National Geographic special. Often the refrigerator door is open as well; I think that my stock of Coca-Cola is slowly diminishing, but, oddly, the V-8 seems to be untouched. This has been going on for about a month, which is disturbing enough in itself, but recently, the strangeness has begun to escalate. About a week ago, I began to notice that my Macin- tosh was also turned on, when I was sure that I had shut it off before leaving. Some of my arcade games now have new high scores that I can't account for, signed only with the letters "CHP". Two days ago, to top it all off, I got some angry email claiming that I had made lewd postings to alt.ptang. Naturally, I had an angry confrontation with my roommates, who deny everything. One of them said that it was probably "the lemurs" that did it, as if that explanation cleared everything up. I'm wondering if I should give some credence to this theory, or if I need to immediately start looking for new roommates. Besides the obvious worry that at least one of my roommates is playing sociopathic mind games with me, I'm beginning to be severely frustrated by the occurrences themselves. If I find out that all my stamps and envelopes have been thoroughly pre-licked ^one^ ^more^ ^time^, I think I'll scream. So, what do you think? Are lemurs that prevalent on Stanford's campus (we do have a lot of vending machines), or in Califor- nia in general? Could they be responsible for the things I've been discovering? Could a lemur crack my account and post to the usenet under my name? And, what might be most incriminating, can a lemur, as Apple claims, actually learn how to use the Macintosh GUI? --------------- (11) What if I _wanted_ lemurs around? How would I arrange that? Joel Baxter again has some helpful input: If you actually a lemur presence in your abode, I don't think that it would be necessary to shell out any cash. Jugs of Big K Grape Soda on the doorstep will do nicely. Or, you might try provoking their lovable primate curiosity, by posting large signs on your door reading "ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY NO MADAGASCARIAN PROSIMIANS ALLOWED", or "Note to Twinkie Deliveryperson: Leave the fourteen Twinkie Econo-Paks (tm) that I ordered in the kitchen. Thank you.". --------------- (12) Has anyone actually sat down and talked with an actual lemur? Our interviewing staff had occasion to interview a bona fide lemur, one "Diana," late one night on the Yale campus: Q: How did you first discover that you were a lemur? A: Well, to start with, I was a net addict. I read alt.geek for a long time, because it seemed to be for me. But there was a furry bristling of discomfort once in a while; I shiverred at the thought of any of these people actually meeting me and discovering that I frink and stuff like that. I discovered by accident. I fell from the ceiling late one night and hit just the right combination of keys. Q: Do you agree with the way in which lemurs are represented in a.f.l.? A: For now, yes, I find it flattering. I haven't had the luxury of a long-term sense of identity which would allow me to criticize my own community. Right now I am enjoying this sense of fellowship and popularity. Q: You talk very much like a human. A: Yes, this is a skill I acquired out of necessity. You may notice that the language is formal, stilted. I do not find the words I need in human language. I stutter in person. People lose patience because I take so long to say what I mean. They don't understand that there are things I want to say and just can't. I've heard humans say stuff like, "I'm speechless," or, "I can't find the words to express..." but then they go right on talking, apparently undisturbed by this supposed lack of words. Q: But you are quite verbose. A: To compensate. What have I said so far? Not much, but I come across as very talkative, right? Q: Do you spy on people at night? A: Yes, I love window-peering. I have spied on nearly everyone who posts in this group. My observations are quite interesting, but again, you don't have the vocabulary for them. Anything I could say in your vocabulary is rather dull, something you know already. Q: Have you ever wanted to go to Madagascar? A: The travel agencies won't sell me a ticket. I'd love to go, but I have to wait for the next lemur tour. My first step is to visit my North Carolina kin. I'm scared, though. Q: Do you see hope for the lemur community in the future? A: Why all these questions? I'm not the interviewing type. I'm not typical of all lemurs, and you can't see me right now. You have no idea what I'm doing. I'm laughing my head off and bouncing up and down! And you took all this seriously! Ha! Q: I think I'm missing the joke. A: That's cause the joke's on you! Ha ha ha!!! --------------- (13) What is the "Lemurata"? Susanna Richardson shared "Lemurata" with us, after finding it typed into her computer late one night when no one else was around (that she knew of). Doubtless the "Lemurata" is Wisdom of the Ages if you're a lemur. LEMURATA Swing silently amid the fans & light fixtures, & remember what pleasure there may be in not having to replace broken bulbs. Avoid Silent Lemurs, unless you are in need of skin grafts. Rotate your Twinkie (tm) supplies, putting the stale ones on top. * Frink warmly of those who have more Big K than yourself and heed well their nap times: know what to *ptang* and when. * Consider that two cows never make a lemur, but that three can kill (if they ever get inside the ship again). Whenever possible, dial Madagascar and leave the phone off the hook. * Be comforted that in the face of all idiotic behaviour by lemmings and despite the inability of humans to pronounce *ptang* properly, their credit cards are easy to steal. * Remember the Mooser. * Strive at all times to Frink, Ptang and WhoooOOOOoooo. * Know yourself. If you need help, call the DUPC. Exercise caution in your nightly 7-11 break-ins, especially if you use a human look-out. * Be assured that a swing through the jungles of most humans souls would be a major risk to life and limb, the tangled undergrowth is unbelievable. Particularly, stay away from the id. * Frink therefore with only the lemur with the most Twinkies (tm). Accept no Little Debbies (tm). * Gracefully surrender the things of youth, leeming, little raisins with chocolate, expired phone cards and Internet access for Nigel. Let not inferior soda drinks be served. * Annoy people nightly, screens are for banging. * For a good time call 555-1212, ask for Hillary. * Take heart amid the deepening gloom that the hyenas are finally getting enough Cheetos to justify helping kill the Command Cow: and reflect that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be worse in Aachen. * You are a leemling of the Universe; you have no keys to the CowShip, and whether you can hear it or not, there's a big dark shape in the alley RIGHT BEHIND YOU!!! with glowing eyes and milky breath. * Aieee! * Therefore, make plane reservations for Annatanarivo right now. * With all its hopes, dreams, promises and slash & burn economy the world continues to be a place where lemurs can get a Twinkie (tm) at 3am. --------------- (14) What is a Rufous Mouse Lemur? Joel Baxter points out: I believe that we should pay more attention to the Rufous Mouse Lemur. Besides the fact that it's irresistably cute, it seems to me that it has potential for mischief that its larger brethren may lack. One Rufous Mouse Lemur could fit quite nicely through a mail slot, allowing it to then open the door for the dozen Ringtailed Lemurs, slightly boffoed after one too many Big K's, that had the sudden urge to set up a Slip-`n-Slide (tm) in your master bedroom and take turns riding the carousel of your CD changer. While a baby lemur could serve this purpose as well, they tend to be more easily distracted. A full-grown Rufous Mouse Lemur is quite a bit brighter, and, (so I've heard) will do just about anything for a half-ounce hit of Big K. --------------- (15) Do lemurs get along with other sorts of animals? Pets, for example? Joel Kent Baxter says: My local lemurs seem to display a contempt, if not downright hostility, toward domesticated animals. While we like to think of the lemurs as cuddly fun-loving creatures, there may be a darker side... the notes on my monitor, for instance, seem to indicate a certain condescending attitude toward dogs. I've noticed that while the local lemurs get along quite affably with the campus raccoons, the dogs and cats tend to give my place (and other infested buildings such as the workstation lab and the laundry room) a wide berth. I'm not sure what's going on, but the noises that I sometimes hear at night (barking intermixed with the sounds of pruning shears, an outboard motor, and what I believe is a tennis ball machine) make me think that perhaps I don't really want to know. Of course, no one would believe that the lemurs get along with the raccoons simply because they mistake them for portly ringtails. I believe that the lemurs simply don't have any patience for animals that let themselves get pushed around by humans, and only the raccoons have enough chutzpah to be on the lemurs' "in" list. That may be why lemurs seem to have a proclivity for cow-taunting; after all, the rank and file of the cowsmonaut descendents are pretty much domesticated by now. For those that disagree, I have one word: McDonalds. --------------- (16) Suppose you were a resident assistant in a college dormitory. And suppose you had lemurs living on your hall. What would that be like? Matt Rice ( shared his experiences with us: A few lemurs live on my floor, and a few more live throughout the building. They aren't allowed to keep bazookas in the rooms. This has caused a small controversy in the past, but they've found a way around it. The lemurs have started building catapults. They're very accurate with them, actually. I've had to ask them to cool it more than once when they started bombing the residence halls on the other side of campus. Who would have thought that stale twinkies could maim? And as far as tripping over them on my way to the shower, that doesn't happen. BUT, when I'm doing my nightly rounds, I have had to tell them to stop swinging from the ceiling lights. (I know they just get right back up there when I'm gone, but it's the principle). The biggest complaint they have is the student commisary doesn't sell Big K grape soda. The shipping charges for two liter bottles is enormous, so mail order is out of the question. They've been substituting Barq's root beer, but I can tell they don't like it very much. Also, I've noticed they won't use the nearest convenience store. It is called "Wa-wa," and is a fairly large chain in the north- east. As far as I can tell, it's a rather nasty word in Lemurese, and they refuse to shop there. They even refuse to talk about it. Everytime one of the human residents says "I'm making a Wa-wa run, anyone want anything?" when he/she is gone, the lemurs hack into their computer accounts and start a flame war in talk.abortion. It's not a pretty sight. Unfortunately, there is little respect for our furry residents. Some humans even deny their existence. One even went so far as to blame her missing CD-ROM disc loader on elves, when any fool knows that the lemurs were using it to find out what happens when you load Peter Gabriel CDs into the NTIS CD database. (It was return- ed, by the way.) Lemurs had to adapt to dorm life, since most rooms don't have lights in the ceilings, only floor lamps. There are, however, sprinkler pipes that hang down a good foot and a half from the ceiling. The human residents dry their laundry or hang their bikes on these (the laundry is ok, the bikes aren't). The lemurs swing from them like nobody's business. The most complaintes come from residents at 3:00 am when the lemurs start banging on them with spoons they 'liberated' from the dining hall. Has something to do with what the home shopping network offers as a special... --------------- (17) Are there lemurs in, say, Central Europe? Frank McPherson went backpacking in Europe in 1992 and had the following experience, which tends to answer "yes" to the above question: I had just spent a week in rural Hungary and was absolutely dying for a real live western candybar when I returned to Vienna, Austria. I left the u-bahn station and headed towards the center of town, stopping in the first grocery store I came to. I im- mediately became enamoured with and bought a package of six or eight Bounty candybars. I'm pretty sure I only got to eat one of them. The theft happened later that evening. I was walking down a small street, trying to remember where the hostel I had reserved a room in was located. I kept hearing strange THUD sounds surrounded by a laughter I'd never heard before coming from a lighted, open window up ahead. Every once in a while, I could swear it looked like a kitchen light with a small monkey would swing madly out the window, reach the top of its arc, and swing back through the window, accompanied by gales of the strange laughter. When I approached the window to see what was going on, something furry jumped on my head and covered my eyes. After it jumped off, I ran. When I finally calmed down enough to realize I was not in any danger, I reached in my backpack to get a Bounty to further calm my nerves. They were gone. It makes sense that the Lemurs like Vienna. It's warm in the summer, with a booming tourist trade, and a LOT of junkfood. Do you think they ever attend the Staatsoper? The Wiener Philhar- moniker? I bet they like Beethoven.... --------------- (18) What about in England? Any lemurs there? Mike Knell quoth: Lemurs are, as far as I can tell, rare in Britain. The lack of Twinkies is the exact same thing that keeps many Lemurs away. There are a few notable exceptions though - Arthur the City Lemur is a well-known sight amongst merchant bankers, with his unique pin-striped ringed tail. I can think of no credible British substitute for the Twinkie (although I've never had one, the descriptions are very graphic). Would a Lemur like a Crunchie? Big K is totally unobtainable, possibly some of the generic supermarket brand fizzy orange/blackcurrant drinks would suffice. Having said that, I've heard rumours of a corner shop in Solihull that sells Twinkies, so there may be a change to come. Britain may be on the verge of a major Lemur invasion if the correct food becomes available. Keep the ceiling lights though. Displaying your National Geographic collection prominently in your window should also encourage Lemurs, especially if you leave the ones with articles about Madagascar at the front. There are also disturbing numbers of Cows in Britain. The black- and-white ones are especially worth watching out for, but then to my knowledge the Terror Cow has never been sighted here, for- tunately. It's good to see that people in Britain are also taking Lemurs seriously. To be hit by a wave of Lemurs arriving through Heathrow without being prepared at all could be devastating for the coun- try's junk food supply. Watch out for those Hungarian piccolo players appearing at airports. --------------- (19) Write a story about lemurs following the Edward Bulwer-Lytton "dark and stormy night" style for me, please? It was a dark and stormy night. Melanie and I walked slowly down the hill, picking our way among the boulders. It was our first trip to this part of the country, and we were truly in awe of the vast natural beauty that surrounded us. Huge pillars of stone towered above us, stretching up cliffs rising hundreds of feet into the air. Wow. As the storm picked up, we stopped under an overhang and watched as Mother Nature battered the countryside with biting, driven rain and powerful blasts of lightning. Slowly, I pulled a Twinkie from my jacket. Before I could offer it to Melanie, however, a small furry thing swung down from above and landed before me. It was a lemur, and it wanted my Twinkie. My worst nightmares were coming true. As I was backed up against the cliff, there was no place to run. I tried to lateral the Twinkie to Melanie, but the lemur was just too quick. It snatched the snack from midair and leapt away. It stared at me for a moment, said "Frink", and was gone forever. After a while of standing in silence, Melanie and I turned and continued our trek down the mountainside. It was only then that I noticed the absence of my grape soda. Thanks be to Tob Wood for that Lemur Gothic story. --------------- (20) What did Nigel the Lemur do to Dick Depew of ARMM fame? From: (Nigel the Lemur) Newsgroups:, Subject: Re: fan??!! Date: 9 Apr 93 05:19:55 GMT Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA In article <1353@ulogic.UUCP> hartman@ulogic.UUCP (Richard M. Hartman) writes: >Nigel! There's a bunch of TWINKIES stashed in Dick's hard drive.... *TWINKIES* mmmmmmmmm snarf snarf snarf snarf snarf --------------- (21) Who is LEMORO? LEMORO is the fictional creation of Jeffrey Klein ( Dr Dooley Banner, theorizing that the true potential of sponge cake could be unlocked by gamma radiation, exposes a Twinkie to the lethal rays! Jeff Klein, shiftless layabout, unwittingly consumes the golden confection, causing his very CELLULAR PATTERN to be IRREVOCABLY ALTERED! He is now -- LEMORO, the LEMUR that WALKS like a MAN!!!!! With a purposeful grimace and a terrible 'frink' He chugs down a bottle of Big K grape drink -- LEMORO! Helpless cows in a big cow ship Scream as his bug-eyes look into it -- LEMORO! He picks up a Twinkie and he throws it over his shoulder As he wades through the aisles to the center of Kroger Oh no, they say he's got to go, go go LEMORO! Oh no, there goes a Ho-Ho, go go LEMORO! History shows, then and now How lemurs point up the folly of cows LEMORO has starred in a series of films, such as LEMORO VS KOW KONG, LEMORO LET DIE, IT'S A WONDERFUL LEMORO, and SHE'S GOTTA HAVE LEMORO. ----------- Lemur Humor is continued in Part 3 of the FAQ, "Part 3 of 7 -- Lemur Humor Part Three." ------------------------------------------------------------------ Prepared January 31, 1993 by Joel Furr, Revised February 15, 1993 by Joel Furr, Revised April 5, 1993 by Joel Furr, Revised July 6, 1993 by Joel Furr, Revised August 2, 1994 by Joel Furr, Path:!faqserv From: (Joel K. Furr) Newsgroups:,alt.answers,news.answers Subject: Frinkquently Asked Questions (Part 3 of 7, Lemur Humor Part Three) Supersedes: Followup-To: Date: 21 Jun 1995 11:18:44 GMT Organization: none Lines: 722 Approved: Expires: 14 Jul 1995 11:17:50 GMT Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: Summary: This posting contains a list of Frequently Asked Questions (and the best answers we got) about Lemurs. It should be read by anyone who wishes to post to the newsgroup. X-Last-Updated: 1995/02/08 Originator: faqserv@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU Xref: alt.answers:10108 news.answers:46771 Archive-name: lemur-faq/part3 Alt-fan-lemurs-archive-name: lemur-faq/part3 Last-modified: 1994/08/02 Version: 4.0 Official USENET Alt.Fan.Lemurs Frinkquently Asked Questions Part 3 of 7 -- Lemur Humor Part Three ------------------------------ The Questions (1) How can you catch a ringtailed lemur? (2) Is Joel Furr the new Messiah? (3) What is MAKE.TWINKIES.FAST? (4) Do lemurs like to make prank phone calls? (5) How did Ben Ostrowsky spend his summer vacation? (6) How did Vance Kochenderfer spend his summer vacation? (7) How did Walter Scheuermann spend his summer vacation? (8) What happened to the case of Big K grape soda that was supposed to be awarded to the person who wrote the best How I Spent My Summer Vacation essay? (9) Are there any comic books devoted to lemurs? (10) Are there any musicals devoted to lemurs? (11) Can lemurs masquerade as humans? (12) How do lemurs taste? (13) Is it a good idea to hire lemurs to do odd jobs around the house? (14) What are the offspring of lemurs called? (15) What exciting new shopping experiences await the lemur of tomorrow? The FAQ continues into Part 4, Lemurs Versus Cows. ------------------------------ The Answers (1) How can you catch a ringtailed lemur? Tom Cikoski ( wrote: A short time ago I posted a report on a trip to the Trevor Zoo at the Millbrook School in New York. I noted that their ringtail had adopted a Zonker-like pose high on the wall of his room, catching the late afternoon rays. Yesterday I was flipping thru a book on lemurs when, lo and behold, there's a picture of a ringtail in exactly the same pose! I had been thinking that the Millbrook ringtail was some cool character, but in fact Zonker-behavior is a characteristic of the species. So, this changes somewhat the recommended method for catching any ringtails that might be in your neighborhood. 1. If no natural sunbeams are available, set up a sun lamp in a likely spot. 2. Provide a place for the ringtail to sit in the fashion of a sunbather at the beach. You might want to make a small canvas beach chair or chaise lounge. Make sure it has arms on it for the lemur to stretch out. 3. You might want to set out some Big K Grape and a few Twinkies, but I gather that the chance to improve the tan will be a greater attrac- tion than any snack. 4. A portable radio tuned to an EZ listening station is a nice added touch. 5. Definitely do NOT put out a pair of Foster Grants. He wants to see those rays unhindered. 6. Wait patiently for a ringtail. Let me know how you fare. Since I can drive for half-hour and see a ringtail catching rays I won't need to set this trap myself. ----------- (2) Is Joel Furr the new Messiah? Strange though it may seem, this question HAS come up on The only answer that has been offered was posted by Vance Kochenderfer: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the Lemur of Death, I shall fear no evil; thy Twinkies and thy ceiling fans, they comfort me." Apparently this is part of some obscure creed which lemurs follow. ----------- (3) What is MAKE.TWINKIES.FAST? Newsgroups: From: (Torsten Wesley Adair) Subject: MAKE.TWINKIES.FAST Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1993 20:41:43 GMT If you're curious, take a second and read this... Dear Friend, My name is Ignatz Frozzlschnotz. In September 1988, my car was repossesed, and the bill collectors were hounding me like you wouldn't believe. I was laid off, and my unemployment checks had run out. The only escape I had from the pressure of failure was my computer and my modem. I longed to turn my advocation into my vocation. In October 1988, I received a letter in the mail telling me how I could earn 50,000 Twinkies or more whenever I wanted. I was naturally very skeptical and threw the letter on the desk next to my computer. It's funny though, when you're desperate and backed into a corner, your mind does crazy things. I spent a frustating day looking through the want ads for a job with a future. The pickings were sparse at best. That night I tried to unwind by booting my computer and calling several bulletin boards. I read several of the message posts and then glanced at the letter next to the computer. All at once it came to me. I now had the key to my dreams. I realized that with the power of the computer, I could expand and enhance this pleasure making formula into the most unbelievable food generator that has ever been created. I substituted the computer bulletin boards in place of the post office and electronically did by computer what others were doing 100% by mail. Now only a few letters are mailed manually. Most of the hard work is speedily downloaded to other bulletin boards throughout the world. If you believe that someday you deserve that lucky break that you have waited for all your life, then simply follow the diections below. Your dreams will come true. Sincerely yours, Ignatz Frozzlscnotz -- INSTRUCTIONS -- Follow these directions EXACTLY, and in 20 to 60 days, you will have received well over 50,000 Twinkies, all yours. This program has remained successful because of the HONESTY and INTEGRITY of the participants. Please continue its success by carefully adhering to the instructions. Welcome to the world of Mail Order! This little business is a little different than most mail order houses. Your product is not sold or tangible, but rather a service. You are a business of developing Mailing Lists. Many large corporations are happy to pay big bucks for quality lists (the money made from the mailing lists is secondary to the Twinkies which are received from people like yourself requesting that they be included in that list). [1] Immediately mail one Twinkie to the first five (5) names listed below starting at number 1 and going through number 5. Send Twinkies only please (total investment is five Twinkies). Enclose a note with each letter stating "Please add my name to your mailing list". (This is a legitimate service that you are requesting, and you are paying one Twinkie for this service). [2] Remove the name that appears at number 1 on the list. Move the other 9 names up one position. (Number 2 will become number 1, and number 3 will become number 2, etc.). Place your name, address, and zip code in the number 10 position. [3] Post the new letter with your name in the number 10 position into ten(10) separate bulletin boards in the message base or to the file section, call the file MAKE.TWINKIES.FAST. [4] Within 60 days, you will receive over 50,000 TWINKIES. Keep a copy of this file yourself so that you can use it again whenever you need money. As soon as you mail out these letters, you are automatically in the mail order business, and people are sending you a Twinkie to be placed on your mailing list. This list can be then be rented to a list broker that can be found in the Yellow Pages for additional income on a regular basis. This list will become more valuable as it grows in size. This is a service. This is perfectly legal. If you have any doubts, refer to Title 18, Section 1302 & 1341 of the postal lottery laws. NOTE: Make sure you retain EVERY name and address sent to you, either on computer or hard copy. Do not discard the names and notes they send you. This is PROOF that you are truly providing a service, and should the IRS or any other government agency question you, you can provide them with this proof! Remember, as each post is downloaded and the instructions carefully followed, five members will be reimbursed for their participation as a List Developer with one Twinkie each. Your name will move up the list geometrically so that when your name reaches the number 5 position, you will be receiving thousands of Twinkies. -- NAMES -- 1. Elisha Lansman MB 1087 Brandeis University Waltham, MA 02254-9110 2. Dmitri Linde 744 Mayfield Ave. Stanford, CA 94305 3. Claude Suddreth 131 W. Jackson South Sapulpa, OK 74066 4. Lirong Chen 124 Stanton Ave. Apt. 6 Ames, IA 50014 5. Angel Negron Box 4583 USAFA, CO 80841 6. Hugh MacMullan 19 Skylonda Dr. Woodside, CA 94062 7. Scott MacFarland 1224 E. Lemon #144 Tempe, AZ 85281 8. Kevin Trigger 125 Honeysuckle Dr. Boalsburg, PA 16827 9. Rich Wood 113 Keenan Hall Notre Dame, IN 46556-5615 10. Torsten Adair 9319 Meadow Drive Omaha, NE 68114-2230 ----------- (4) Do lemurs like to make prank phone calls? Yes. Here's one true account posted by an reader, Malinda McCall ( who was apparently targeted by her local lemurs. Malinda, take it away: This really happened! Truly! >RING!< >RING!< >RING!< ME: Hello? CALLER: whooooooo frink ME: Who is this? CALLER: cheepcheepcheep whoo FRINK! ME: Is this Eric? I told you, I am not interested. I have a boyfriend! CALLER: FRINK? ME: Yes, frink, and often. CALLER: whoo whoo ME: Who is that? This is getting annoying. CALLER: chirp cheepcheep whooo-frink hssss cheep ME: No, I don't have Prince Albert in a can. CALLER: whoo. :( ME: WHat was that last bit? CALLER: :( ME: Oh, an inaudible sigh of regret. Say, I have to go to work tomorrow, and it is three a.m., so let's cut this short--- CALLER: frink chirp? ME: No, they are white, actually, but I do own some frilly black ones. HEY! Cut that out! CALLER: cheep cheep cheep whoooo frink ME: You must have the wrong number. There is no "Hillary" here. CALLER: Frink frink frink whooooooOOOOOoo ME: I am positive. CALLER: hsssst whoooooo FRINK, whoo whooo chirp. ME: My refrigerator is fine, if that is what you mean. CALLER: Frink whoo whoo? ME: I don't need siding. CALLER: Whoo? ME: Nope, I have an encyclopaedia. CALLER: Chirp chirp whooo ME: Time share? I don't exactly have any extra cash to throw away, no. CALLER: Whoo whooo cheep cheep cheep ME: I can't support Perot, the elction is over. CALLER: Whoo Cheep Cheep? ME: There is no Seymour Butts here. CALLER: whooo frink? ME: No, there is no Jack Mehoff either. CALLER: whooo frink cheep cheep chirp ME: I gave at the office. CALLER: whooo whooo cheep cheep ME: I think I am already 'saved', thank you. Isn't three a.m. a bad time to call folks for your church? CALLER: whooo frink cheep ME: Why yes, I do have a large quantity of delicious grape-flavored chemical-enhanced soda! CALLER: WHOOOOOO FRINK?? ME: No, no Twinkies, but I do have lots of Little Debbie Swiss Rolls and Ho-Ho's. CALLER: whooo frink, cheep? ME: It is a lovely chandelier, an antique. It lights the place up nicely. CALLER: whoo frink frink whoo? ME: Why would you want to know if I had a cat? I used to, and I should really get around to sealing the cat door, but I've been very busy. CALLER: hssss frink! Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zz... ME: Hello? ME: Hello? ME: I think the little cretin hung up. [An hour later] ME: What the hell is that racket down in my kitchen?? Malinda So watch what you say to any lemurs that call you on the telephone. ----------- (5) How did Ben Ostrowsky spend his summer vacation? Taking physics. Here's his account: Sophomore physics is boring, sometimes. When I realized I'd be spending my summer working out problems about pendulums and such, I promised myself that I'd have some fun... no matter what. Lemur Philosophy, lesson one: There's nothing so bad it can't be made better by being silly and self-indulgent. At first, the homework I turned in was done precisely according to the book. Occasionally, I'd state a formula and attribute it to Frink, but aside from that there was strictly no goofing about. The class was intended to cover a semester's material in six weeks. As the class progressed rapidly, the questions began to change. When quoting problems from the book, I would write in a different, but similar, situation. One problem asks: "A hunter points his rifle at a monkey which is in a tree. As the hunter fires, the monkey lets go of his branch and begins falling. Will the bullet hit the monkey?" The answer is yes. The question, however, is rather boring. When I wrote up the problem, I wrote: "A lemur is swinging from a chandelier. His companion is about to use a slingshot to deliver a Twinkie to the lemur on the chande- lier. The slingshot is pointed directly at the swinging lemur. As his friend lets go of the Twinkie, the first lemur goes into his dismount and begins falling. Will the lemur catch the Twinkie?" The answer I gave was a proper theoretical argument. At the end, I added: "And, of course, there's nothing that can keep a lemur from a Twinkie." I got an A on that homework... ------------ (6) How did Vance Kochenderfer spend his summer? Vance Kochenderfer ( wrote: What did I do on my summer vacation? Well, not much, although I managed to spend a lot of money on a car that is now dead. I also spent a lot of time thinking about getting a permanent job. Not too much lemur-related stuff going on. The pool party was fun, but all of the filters are clogged with fur now and I don't think I'll ever be able to remove all the Big K Grape stains. Then J. Arthur Lemur threatened to sue me because he slipped and hit his head on the diving board even though it was his own damn fault for trying to do a triple somersault with a half twist when he knew as well as anyone he couldn't do anything with a degree of difficulty over 3.8. But they're gone now, apparently back to Virginia Tech to try and sell elevator passes and tickets to the pool on the roof to the new freshpeople. ------------ (7) How did Walter Scheuermann spend his summer vacation? Walter Scheuermann ( wrote: My holidays were once again spent on the British Isles normally noted only for their Cow population and not for a high concentra- tion of Lemurs. Well you have to admit it's not easy to bring a Lemur to Britain, if you smuggle them they tend to shout frink at very inconvenient moments and steal the officers wallets, very embarrassing. Quarantine is no alternative, if you ever tried to get a Lemur into quarantine you'll probably know what I'm talking about. Well as my journey was coming to an end I had a very strange experience, it all happened on the Intercity Edinburgh to London Kings Cross. I boarded the train in Newcastle, not knowing what was waiting for me and only about 2 miles to Durham it happened. Suddenly the train came to a halt, first I didn't realize this as something special but as the conductor reported technical problems I started to wonder. After about 1/2 hour of staring out of the window I noticed the complete lack of farm animals in the area especially Cows. I asked the conductor whether the train was transporting anything else then travellers and he told me that there were two more wagons carrying a load of Twinkies and Grape Soda of unknown value and suddenly everything became clear to me. I headed for the buffet wagon and asked for some Grape Soda and as expected the vendor told me that he had only beer and hot drinks left, another clue to support my thoughts. I started to watch the repairmen and noticed that one of them had a black and white tail hanging out of his pants. The whole operation Big K only took about 3 hours to complete on our train. Unfortunately I was not able to leave the train because they had manipulated the electronics. A smaller group used the resulting chaos to rob the station kiosks of Durham and Darlington blind of any candy bars. ------------ (8) What happened to the case of Big K grape soda that was supposed to be awarded to the person who wrote the best How I Spent My Summer Vacation essay? Richard Hartman (hartman@ulogic.UUCP) wrote: In article (Joel Furr) writes: >I've still got that case of Big K Grape Soda that I bought to award to the >person who posted the funniest What My Lemurs Did Over Summer Vacation >article, and since only two people said anything and neither was funny, >it's still waiting for a winner. Examine that case carefully. This may be an empty claim. According to all reports my lemurs' summer project was to infiltrate and claim the prize prior to it's awarding. They tunnelled up under the crate and used high speed drills to tap into the bottles from underneath without breaking the glass. Then they just stood in the tunnels with their little mouths wide open to slurp up the prize. There was only a little pushing and shoving since there were almost enough soda streams for them all (although it did take little Joseph a few days to get his fur all un-sticky). So, everyone out there, beware! The LGSST (Lemur Grape Soda Strike Team) has been blooded and is thirsty for more action! More to the point, there is no prize left to compete for, so save your entries, 'twill be for naught! (Joel: as proof that the LGSST was actually there, they say that you should take down that tacky "dogs playing poker" wall hanging....) ------------ (9) Are there any comic books devoted to lemurs? Well, possibly. Some time back, Jeffrey Klein wrote: Yes, friends, VaporComix is pleased to announce the launching of the world's first lemur anthology comic series, ---LEMURS-A-GO-GO!--- Preview of issue #1: [] Fans of all-out action will thrill to the riotous return of the priemier prosimian pugilist, the monstrous Madagascarite, LEMORO, the LEMUR who WALKS like a MAN! In his latest reign of terror, Lemoro must face the bovine Brodbignagian, KOW KONG! [] Pablo Picasso, Norman Rockwell, Ernest Hemingway and Elliot Ness will be just a few of the guest stars in a series detailing the early adventures of the lemur whose name IS adventure, in THE YOUNG INDRI-ANA JONES CHRONICLES! [] We begin our tribute to the great American actor James Stewart with MR. LEMUR GOES TO WASHINGTON, the story of a mild-mannered gentle lemur who accidentaly finds himself in the U.S. Congress! Soon, he sets to rid Washington of corruption by staring at politicians with his huge, baleful eyes and pointing at them with his long, bony, accusing finger! Dir: Frink Capra. Well, that's what we have planned for the first issue of LEMURS-A-GO-GO, and all of us here at VaporComix hope you go out and pick up a copy Real Soon Now! We look forward to your feedback! ------------ (10) Are there any musicals devoted to lemurs? Many. Lemurs are highly musical beasts, you know. Sue Miller, noted playwright, shared with us part of the libretto from "Lemur Side Story": The wildly popular lemur musical Lemur Side Story opens to the sound of cud chewing and hooves clicking. The cows are discussing herd politics. When you're a cow, you're a cow all the way, From your first slurp of milk to your last bale of hay! When you're a cow, someone hears when you moo -- You've got your herd around, you're gregarious too! The cowship is here! The bovine plan's succeedin'. You lemurs frink off, 'cause every cow's proceedin' ... The herd's stampedin'! Meanwhile, our hero, the ringtailed lemur, has just met his true love. Alas, she is of the wrong species. The most beautiful sound I ever heard: Sifahka, sifahka, sifahka, sifahka... All the beautiful sounds of the world in a single word: Sifahka, sifahka, sifahka, sifahka... Sifahka! I just met a Coquerel's Sifahka. And suddenly I found Twinkies wrappers all around my floor! Sifahka! A cute little fuzzy sifahka Will bang on all my screens, and hog the whole big screen TV! Sifahka. Say it loud and the cow's will get you. Say it soft and they'll never forget you. Sifahka. I'll swing all night long with Sifahkas. WHAT WILL BECOME OF OUR LOVERS? WILL TRUE LOVE TRIUMPH OVER EVOLUTION? OR WILL THE BOVINE PLOT DESTROY THEIR HAPPINESS ALONG WITH THE REST OF THE WORLD? AND WHAT ABOUT THOSE MYSTERIOUS SHAPES IN THE SKY? ------------ (11) Can lemurs masquerade as humans? Christopher Hoskins ( wrote: My roommate and myself now suspect that there is a lemur hiding here in our dorm under the guise of a MTU student. We have conclusive proof of him begging for a twinkie while he was sleeping. HIS roommate captured this vital evidence on tape. An interesting happenstance, if you ask me. It could be coincidence, but then again, you can never be too safe when you have a stash of twinkies in the room. What tests should we perform now to gather conclusive evidence that he is really a lemur in sheep's clothing? ------------ (12) How do lemurs taste? Bill Sellers ( supplied the answer when this question came up: In article writes: >Nice place. I think I will visit more often. >How do lemurs Taste? With their sharp little teeth and questing tongues. How do you taste? ------------ (13) Is it a good idea to hire lemurs to do odd jobs around the house? Apparently not. The Crafts Lady ( wrote: Help! Last month, we hired a lemur to do odd jobs around the house - jobs so odd only a lemur could do them. He would polish the insides of our shoes, wax the ceilings, and vacuum the lawn. They are remarkably well suited to this sort of work, and we were very satisfied with his performance. Unfortunately, our daughter fed the lemur some leftover fried chicken after school one day and he has acquired quite a taste for the food. He now eats between five and six pounds of fried chicken a day, pausing only to belch and stretch while the spent carcass is removed from his plate and another delivered by a family member. My wife no longer has time for housekeeping and our house has gradually become a frowsy shambles. Rats nest in the pantry, and the roof may collapse soon. I hate to say it, but I believe the lemur has outlasted his welcome in our home. Have any readers of this newsgroup ever dismissed a lemur from domestic service? Since they are endangered, are there any special procedures that must be followed? I would prefer to break the news gently, as I do not want to hurt his feelings, and I do not relish the prospect of having my esophagus removed by the arboreal nocturnal mammal and used as a stylish fashion accessory (as this is a leading cause of death I understand in Madagascar, if ever there was one) as you can well imagine. ------------ (14) What are the offspring of lemurs called? Bill Sellers ( wrote: Spurred on by the ever-helpful Rachel Perkins, I am posting a series of possible names for that which is not yet named, to wit, the offspring of lemurs. What shall they be called as individuals, and what as a litter? Here are some possibilities. Category Single Several ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ Ultra-cute lemlet, lemlette fluff Cute lemurling bundle Neutral young litter Not very cute sprog heap Bizarre gruntling packet Usenet troll kibo ------------ (15) What exciting new shopping experiences await the lemur of tomorrow? Torsten Adair ( wrote: As I was reading the Sunday edition of the Omaha World-Herald this morning, I came across a short article and photo describing the construction of a new "Super K" store in Lincoln, Nebraska. This store is owned by the K-Mart Corporation, and has nothing to do with the Circle K stores. However, according to the article, these new stores will combine grocery stores and K-Mart stores, and will be arranged thematical- ly, so that baby strollers will be located near baby food and diapers. Thus, it will be even easier for Lemurs to locate necessary items, such as Twinkies, grape soda, electronics, and fusion generators. I doubt that these stores will use the swinging fluorescent lamps found in most stores, but the recessed ceiling panels should allow Lemurs even easier access to most parts of the store, concealed behind the foam panels, crawling along the wiring and asbestos-free pipes. The article did mention two Super-Ks in Ohio, one of which is in Medina. Would anyone care to report on the architecture, layout, and security systems used in the Super-Ks? ------------ The FAQ continues into Part 4, "Part 4 of 7 -- Lemurs Versus Cows." ------------------------------------------------------------------ Revised August 2, 1994 by Joel Furr, Path:!faqserv From: (Joel K. Furr) Newsgroups:,alt.cows.moo.moo.moo,alt.answers,news.answers Subject: Frinkquently Asked Questions (Part 4 of 7, Lemurs Versus Cows) Supersedes: Followup-To: Date: 21 Jun 1995 11:18:46 GMT Organization: none Lines: 591 Approved: Expires: 14 Jul 1995 11:17:50 GMT Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: Summary: This FAQ posting details the ugly truth behind the Lemur-Cow feud. X-Last-Updated: 1995/02/08 Originator: faqserv@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU Xref: alt.cows.moo.moo.moo:140 alt.answers:10109 news.answers:46772 Archive-name: lemur-faq/part4 Alt-fan-lemurs-archive-name: lemur-faq/part4 Last-modified: 1994/08/06 Version: 4.0 Official USENET Alt.Fan.Lemurs Frinkquently Asked Questions Part 4 of 7 -- Lemurs Versus Cows This posting contains the ugly truth behind the Lemur-Cow feud. ------------------------------ The Questions (1) What's the story about these Lemurs I occasionally see flying past my window? (2) How come the Lemurs can get onto the cow starship when the cows themselves can't get back in? (3) What is the Terror Cow? (4) What is the Cowship Investigation Agency? (5) Is Allan Murphy actually a cow? (6) Has anyone besides Allan had these weird cow experiences? (7) What was the so-called "Last Report of Agent North By North- west?" (8) Where can I get weapons to fend off the Cows? (9) Have Microsoft and IBM been infiltrated by the Cows? (10) Have the cows tried any clever new strategies? (11) Are the lemurs actually stringing the cows along, laughing from the shadows while the cows fumble about on their mad dreams of world domination? (12) What are all these cow-related things doing in a lemurs newsgroup? ------------------------------ The Answers (1) What's the story about these Lemurs I occasionally see flying past my window? When you see a Lemur fly past your window, odds are that it was one of the Lemurs trying out the new anti-grav packs they've "borrowed" from the cows' ship. [We refer here to the Cow Ship rumored to be hidden somewhere in the fields around Blacksburg, Virginia, the ship that the ancestors of all cows traveled to this planet in before losing the key and locking themselves out) The anti-grav packs used to be horseshoe-mounted, with four to a cow. But as individual units, they'll lift a Lemur quite nicely. Of course, they are programmed to accept verbal cow commands, so the Lemurs have to "Moo" to fly with them. Lemur hackers are at this very moment trying to reprogram the anti-grav packs to accept commands in Lemur-ese, a job complicated by the cows' practice of programming all their equipment with a powerful Multiple-Object-Oriented (MOO) language. The Lemur hackers are attempting to install a highly technical form of Lemur-ese: from what we hear, there are 3 separate words they're trying to install for one command: * the first, or "prefrink", command, is the action (what the Lemur wants to happen) * the second, or "cofrink", command, is the recipient of the action (e.g., if the prefrink is "attack" [in Lemur-ese, of course], the cofrink would be, for example, Daniel Pawtowski, to pick a name at random) * the third word, or "postfrink", is similar to what in English we call an adverb. Example, "fly Tulsa _quickly_" (translated from Lemur-ese). Or, "attack store _nuclear_." ----------- (2) How come the Lemurs can get onto the cow starship when the cows themselves can't get back in? Lemurs are much smaller and more agile than the cows, so they've managed to unbolt the grates over the intakes for the scramjets and gain access to the ship's interior via the engineering crawlways. They love to sit up on the bridge, staring through the windows at all the surrounding cows with their big eyes. This, of course, annoys the cows to no end. Luckily for them, though, the main systems cannot be activated by a Lemur, as they are keyed to the security codes imbedded into the forward hooves of the Command Cows. The worrying thing is this: what happens if the Lemurs find a way to hotwire the main weapons panels? Without access to the power systems the guns would only be at about one-tenth power but still, that could toast a major city before you could say "heat wave." The cows are just not up there when it comes to devious pranks such as the Lemurs are known to excel at. After all, our big-eyed Lemurs are primates. And primates, as we all know, are the natural leaders. Look who's wearing the pants around THIS planet anyway. Primates. Cows are more brute-force stand-around-and-be-bored-and- chew-your-cud kinda creatures. You'll never see anyone painting pictures of bucolic herds of Lemurs chewing cud against a hill-side and sunset backdrop. ----------- (3) What is the Terror Cow? Well, basically, the theory goes that there's ONE cow that somehow has access to the high-tech arsenal aboard the cow ship. Perhaps this cow does not actually have access to the ship itself, but rather to a secret store of weapons taken off the ship before the keys were lost. In any case, the Terror Cow is both heavily armed and bad-tempered. The lemurs have still not figured out how the Terror Cow manages to keep its supply of rocket-launched grenades and other weapons of mass destruction up. Just when you think "The Terror Cow MUST be out of anti-tank missiles," there comes that knock on your front door and that low, eerie-sounding mooing. Ron Jarrell, who is probably reading this, once wrote an abso- lutely hysterical post on the subject of the Terror Cow. Had very little to do with lemurs, but let's treat it as a sort of tangent. Anyway, it went something like this: "I was sitting at home one night when I heard someone knocking at my front door. I was upstairs so I looked out the window to see who it was. Looking down, I saw what appeared to be a large bovine creature standing on its hind legs, ringing the doorbell. Sitting out on the street was a large tanklike vehicle with guns all over it." "I called down, 'Who is it?'" "Moooove your car, it's blocking the road." "I don't HAVE a car." "Mooooove your furniture." "I didn't hire any movers, I'm not moving." "Terror Cow." "Why didn't you say so in the first place?" The Terror Cow has been sighted many times over the years, always mooving ominously about in a large armored vehicle armed with weapons of mass destruction. A very cheesed off bovine, as far as anyone can tell. Mike Knell ( reports: "I went out for a few beers last night, and when I got back in found that the steak I'd nailed to my door as protection against the ven- geance of the Terrow Cow (I'm on the hit list after the episode with the three Lemurs, the crisps and some coffee) had been incinerated - it had obviously grown very hot at some point. When I got in to my room (the lock had been smashed with a blunt hoof-like object), I found that a big pile of grass had been left there, and my teddy bear had been shot through the head. The note left on my VDU read 'Next time, it's youuuuu...'. Strangely enough, all my milk had been thrown out of the window as well." --------------- (4) What is the Cowship Investigation Agency? The Cowship Investigation Agency, or CIA, is headed by Allan Murphy. Allan seems obsessed with uncovering the secrets of the Cow Ship, at present known only by the lemurs who are small enough to fit into the scramjet intakes and thereby gain access to the interior of the ship. Allan has prepared a "Cowship Investigation Questionnaire", included immediately below, which he would appreciate your completing and returning to him if you know anything about the cow ship, the Terror Cow, or the cow weapons used by the lemurs. --- Begin Questionnaire ---------8<--------------------------------------------- 1) Are you now, or have you ever been in the employ of cows ? 2) Come on now, you don't expect me to believe that. Tell the truth. It'll be easier that way. 3) Where is the cow starship ? 6) What width is a scramjet intake ? 7) And just exactly how do you know this ? 8) Are you close friends with any of the following: A) A lemur B) A tarsier C) A koala D) A flying phalanger E) Any form of sloth F) Joel Furr G) Gary Larson H) A command cow I) Other cow- or lemur-related being. 9) Which of the above do you think would fit up a scramjet intake best ? 10) Have you ever heard a cow talk, or seen one act in an unusual way ? ( eg, fly through the air, pass by in spacecraft, stand up and say "I am a command cow, bow down before me, earth- ling" ) 11) Have you ever seen bright moving lights in the sky, accompa- nied by a low "moo" sound ? 12) Which of the following would persuade you to reveal all about the cows plans first ? A) A pack of angry tarsiers B) A hotwired Mooser up the left nostril C) An agent of the Cowship Investigation Agency questioning you in a whining voice D) Torture - D1) Chinese Water torture ( drip..drip...drip....) D2) Chinese Lemur torture ( frink...frink...frink..) D3) Japanese Fish torture ( sushi'd to death ) D4) Japanese Geisha torture ( sashay'd to death ) E) 1 litre of Big K Grape Soda F) A night watching videos with hyenas, beer'n'Cheetos G) Other-please specify 13) Do you own any suspiciously hi-tech devices ? 14) Do you have an irrational aversion to beef or milk ? 15) Which do you eat on Sundays ? A) Mom's apple pie B) As many twinkies as you can find, with Big K Grape soda C) grass - nice fresh green grass, and plenty of it D) Bamboo E) Eucalyptus leaves F) Other-please specify 16) In your own words, describe a Terror Cow. +----------------------+-----------------------------------------------+ | | Subject marked for: Termination | | For Office Use Only | Surveillance | | | Mauling by tarsier pack | | | Big K Grape Soda delivery | | | .signature flaming | +----------------------+------------------------------------------------ --- End Questionnaire ---------8<------------------------------------ --------------- (5) Is Allan Murphy actually a cow? Allan says "no." Well, actually, he goes into more detail: >I would just like to take this opportunity to point out that, in fact, >I am NOT a cow! >I am NOT a cow! >I am NOT a cow! >I am NOT a cow! > >I've even got the documentation to prove it, look, Cowship Investi- >gation Agency ID card, driving license, bovine spongiform encephalitis >immunization certificate... --------------- (6) Has anyone besides Allan had these weird cow experiences? Several readers have: Josh Brandt, Susanna Richardson, Paul Williams, Jon Ward, and Ben Hardy: Joshua Brandt ( wrote: >I was once chased by a group of cows, and was forced to take refuge on >the roof of a 1940's flatbed truck. They surrounded me, while I >cowered on the roof, but began to act nervous and finally ran away, >leaving me in peace. I remember, as I climbed from the truck, a >strange low "cheep" sound coming from the treetops... Joshua also makes predictions of what an attack by the Terror Cow would be like: >Late at night, there will be a low knocking at your door. Thinking >it's finally the Twinkie'n'Grape Soda delivery person, you will stride >happily to answer it. However, once the door is opened, your doom will >be sealed, and you will find yourself face-to-face with a hulking, >shadowy figure, glistening with the blood of horribly crush Lemurs and >their kind. It will wave aside its cloak, and raise up the anti-tank >missile launcher it carries in its left hoof. With slow deliberation, >knowing you are frozen with icy terror, it will take aim and slowly, >oh so slowly, depress the trigger on its weapon of terror. Susanna Richardson ( had a sighting that may or may not be cowship-related: >Well, I grew up in Wisconsin, so that's a pretty broad range to cover >with a simple answer. Seeing a cow on top of a granite boulder over >twenty feet high is almost a religious experience. Seeing the other >cows worshipping her is also awe-inspiring. She looked much like any >of the other Guernseys, so I couldn't tell if she was a command cow >or not. Paul Williams (, replying to an ad for a restaurant called the "Flying Lemur," wrote: > What I am wondering is, has anyone >actually ever witness a flying lemur or is this just a thing >of fantasy and legend. Not fantasy or legend. The cowship is a reality (witness the US and other countries' efforts to find its location). The anti-gravity flying platforms are a reality (there is much anecdotal evidence). The lemurs have broken into the cowship and are wreaking havoc on civilisation in ways fearsome and mischeivous (trust me on this). Luckily they are only interested in the food thing else you'd find them wispering in the ears of higher political powers for nefarious and diabolic purposes. Remember: the little beasties are *inside* the net already and the greatest secret about them is afsdklhjKLHJASDKLBNMBNm has XXLASKJOlsdjaiawej lassie X ka KLJAS masdk m,sfdgkjLASDF mgfls mFJSDKJkjfgsd fgsdkljfsdlsdjsjjllotkjk the ability under certain circumstances to *comletely* A sdfkhjafnASD(*&^& asd asdhafsd anhfgdkldfgusdfghjsfdgkhjsfgdkhjfgsdkhj frink frink frink a drink of juice ASFASD hjaskjfaouasdfklhafsdkljasdafsdhjafsdkljafsdkljafsd sad asdjasifiakdfj0. Also, the cows are trying to have an end to the lemurs secret lobbying capability; to no avail. With the loss of the command ship access and the resulting disorganisation in the herd, cows find it hard to even discuss the problem amongst themselves, let alone find a solution.] So, congratulations on a good choice of name. What sort of food (books) will you be serving? Would you like to give yourself a free plug? How about discounts for weary and hungry a.f.l. travellers? Do you serve Twinkies(tm)? >Steve >The Flying Lemur >Lakewood, Oh Oh what? Did the Command Cow get you just as you were ending your article? They can track the emissions from your keyboard using special sensors in the forward hoof, and are well aware when anyone is talking about their mortal enemy: lemurs. I'm not worried. I live in a bunker, 100 m underground. :-) Regards, Paul Jon Ward ( wrote: THE COMMAND COWS ARE TAKING OVER BIRMINGHAM UNIVERSITY I have not been able to post for the last week as the UseNet reader would not allow me to. I put this down to a temporary error until I noticed that the academic computing services here have stopped having milk delivered. My suspicions aroused, I started scouting of the surrounding area. Sure enough, in the field behind the computing centre, there stood a cow, surrounded by three other cows looking at it. It turned and looked in my direction...I ran away, but it saw me. Coming home last night, I found tank-track marks outside. The garden had cloven hoof prints in the grass. I was under surveillance. My lemur-like featues had been noted. (Hairy body, blue eyes, facial hair, short, 13 years of National Geographics, A network addiction, and a real Burl Ives record). Then tonight, as drove home, I saw the Terror Cow. It stood outside my house, her tank nonchalenty parked on top of two minis and a capri. Standing on her hind legs, she towered 10 feet into the air. Her bulky flak jacket covered with pockets, each bulging with gre- nades and mines. Both front hooves had multi-barrel missile launchers the size of snare drums, while her chest was crossed with bandoliers. This was not a cow to call Daisy and put a straw hat on. And so I know I have been targeted for termination. I don't know how long I can stay on the run. I need anti-bovine weapons fast, or I will be found Moodered in a ditch somewhere in Selly Oak. I am Jon Ward in Birmingham, England. Email : My address is 38 Add724ld AdiR^Rghj** NO CARRIER..... Ben Hardy wrote: We now have reason to beleive the Terror Cow is resorting to mind-control tactics. At work the other day I noticed several workmates placidly standing in the hallway, quietly. For some reason, their stomachs were growling rather loudly, and they were chewing gum. Their pupils were dialated as well. At the time I passed it off as an office joke, and didn't associate it with cows at all. Admit- tedly it's not everyday you see seemingly normal people lurking in corridors indulging in bovine behavior, but it wasn't particularly disturbing until one of them began to emit an eerie mooing sound after I returned to my office. Fortunately, a few minutes later it was 5 pm, time to leave. The instinct to get out of the office overrode the Terror Cow's wiles, and the last I saw of these people was them grazing on some trees near the railway station... go figure! --------------- (7) What was the so-called "Last Report of Agent North By Northwest?" >From: North by Northwest >Subject: Cow Offensive Warning! >Date: 7 Apr 1993 18:35:12 GMT >Summary: Cow invasion fleet spotted! >Keywords: Cow Ship Key Mooser HELP! > >Yesterday, I tried to transmit a report, using a couple of anonymous >remailers to thwart their intercept operators. That attempt seems to >have failed. Their Universal Decrypted Data Electronic Receivers are >obviously much more capable than we suspected. > >However, I seem to have eluded them for the moment. I'm using a >different technique -- maybe I can get thru. Who could have suspected >that cows were computer-literate? > >I got out of the lab just in time. This thing that they're after -- >what is it? It doesn't seem to have any controls -- nothing moves on >it, and it seems to be all one piece. It looks almost like a giant key >... but what could it fit? > >I desperately need to contact the Prompt Response Organization for the >Suppression of the Invasion Mooovement. I have just realized why this >object was delivered to the Image Processing Labs at JPL. Not only >have we photographed one of the cows' landing craft -- WE CAN SEE THEIR >INVASION FLEET! > >The so-called Comet 1993e "Shoemaker-Levy" is a very peculiar set of >objects in orbit around Jupiter. We can distinguish as many as 17 >separate "nuclei" in a precise bar-like formation. I have photographs >of this "comet" in electronic form (GIF, JPEG) that I will try to get >to the proper authorities. > >Almost simulaneously, another Kuiper-belt "asteroid" (similar to >1992QB1) has been located. Is this the mother ship, lurking far beyond >Saturn? Most horrifying of all, we have spotted a supernova! Was >Supernova 1993J in M81 a civilization that failed to resist the Combat >Offensive Weapons of this invasion fleet? Is it our turn next? > >If there is anyone in the Pasadena area who cavD5*{| >N0 CARRIER --------------- (8) Where can I get weapons to fend off the Cows? Leigh Porter ( writes: >Hello all!! > >We (not a royal 'we' 'cus there really is two of us here) are proud to >offer the UK's Lemur community a superb range of Lemur goods, direct and >at half price from our Lemur house in the Twinkie Zone - > >Cow fallout shelter:- > This BEEF lined shelter, designed to be used underground will > defend any Lemur from over 5000 pats of cow activity, if you are > in danger from the Terror Cow, then this is for you. > > Only $5,672,800,000,000 > >- Rump steak proton guns:- > This new weapon will ward away any bovine creature to a safe > distance, using the best Rump steak batteries, this weapon will > fire a continuous stream of high energy RUMP protons, harmless to > Lemurs but DEADLY to cows at the target. > > Only $7,811,083,784 > >CowView cow surveillance device:- > This small unit, capable of being hidden almost anywhere will > monitor all bovine activities and will send them to a suitable > receiver at up to 100 Kilometers away. > > Only $102,984 > >Suitable Receiver:- > Suitable receiver for the above item. > > Only $12 > >You may ask how we manage these WONDERFUL prices, just don't ask! The prices sound a little steep to me, so perhaps you can bargain Leigh down. Offer him (and his "partners in business") some Twinkies. --------------- (9) Have Microsoft and IBM been infiltrated by the Cows? Vance Kochenderfer ( reports: I have discovered an infiltration of truly massive proportions! Look at the name of the command interpreter for the IBM PC. COMMAND.COM. Flip the M upside down, and what do you get? COMMAND.COW! All postings from Microsoft and IBM should be suspect from now on... --------------- (10) Have the cows tried any clever new strategies? Brian Antoine ( writes: I started reading this group just after its newgroup message came through a few months back. Within a short time afterwards, I discovered that my house had become part of the weekly circuit for the local lemur population. Ever wonder who reads the arbitron stats? Now, every Thursday night is poker night. A night where I get to supply the twinkies (used for betting) and all the Big K they can drink. Funny, I never seem to win any of these games, and the rules seem to change from night to night... Anyway, I had just gotten back from the store where I loaded up for tonights game and was searching for some stuff in the back room, when I heard a noise coming from the kitchen. When I went to check it out, I found a single lemur making a mess of my refrigerator. Now making a mess wasn't anything I hadn't seen before. You ought to try cleaning Big K off of the ceiling after the bottle has been shaken and the top removed. This lemur put them all to shame. When I yelled at it to watch where it was throwing the coldcuts, it poked it head over the door and snarled at me wanting to know 'Where the hell is the beer?'. The more I saw, the more I figured something was wrong. The lemur staring at me had a cigar stuck in its mouth and the eyes looked a little funny. They were different sizes and two different colors to boot. Whats more, as it moved I kept hearing a noises like gears grinding. When I wouldn't tell it where the beer was, it returned to destroying my fridge. Enough was enough and I leaped to try to grab it. Now anyone can tell you that trying to grab a lemur is a hopeless cause. If you've ever tried to get them down from where they are hanging on the lights, you know what I mean. This one was easy to catch and I it began to thrash around on the floor trying to get away, it started to leak something all over my floor. When if finally quit moving, my kitchen looked like someone had stuck a firecracker in a gallon jug of milk. Thats when I the small cable that ran from its back, across my floor, and out the window. When I ran to the window it was just in time to see the back door of a U-haul van slam shut, severing the cable that ran across the lawn and into the back end. The funny thing was, that as it drove off and hit one of the speed bumps outside of my apartment, the panel on the side came loose. I didn't get a good look, but I swear I saw part of the logo for the local dairy. Anyway, the whole mess is sitting in a bag and I'm going to turn it over to the normal crew when they show up for tonights game. This sure stinks of a new subversive attack by the cows. I wish they would pick someplace else for their marketing tests. We're still trying to round up all of the kids with extra arms growing out of their backs from the last marketing test Burger King tried on us. --------------- (11) Are the lemurs actually stringing the cows along, laughing from the shadows while the cows fumble about on their mad dreams of world domination? You betcha. The lemurs know what's going on and they're on top of things. Rest easy. --------------- (12) What are all these cow-related things doing in a lemurs newsgroup? Ask Tim Pierce of alt.config fame, who flamed the idea of an into ash a few months ago. No, anyway, it has to do with the origins of lemur fandom at Virginia Tech. Cow fandom was going strong at the same time and necessarily, the two strains got mixed somewhat prior to the emergence of lemur fandom on the national scene. Allan Murphy seems obsessed by the cows enough that one day we may newgroup and turn him loose there just to see what happens. --------------- The FAQ continues with Part 5 of 7, "Lemurs and the USENET Oracle" -------------------------------------------------------- Revised April 5, 1993 by Joel Furr, Revised July 6, 1993 by Joel Furr, Revised August 2, 1994 by Joel Furr, Path:!faqserv From: (Joel K. Furr) Newsgroups:,,alt.answers,rec.answers,news.answers Subject: Frinkquently Asked Questions (Part 5 of 7, Lemurs and the USENET Oracle) Supersedes: Followup-To: Date: 21 Jun 1995 11:18:49 GMT Organization: none Lines: 572 Approved: Expires: 14 Jul 1995 11:17:50 GMT Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: Summary: This posting contains a list of Frequently Asked Questions (and the best answers we got) about Lemurs. It should be read by anyone who wishes to post to the newsgroup. X-Last-Updated: 1995/02/08 Originator: faqserv@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU Xref: alt.answers:10110 rec.answers:12731 news.answers:46773 Archive-name: lemur-faq/part5 Alt-fan-lemurs-archive-name: lemur-faq/part5 Rec-humor-oracle-d-archive-name: lemurs Last-modified: 1994/08/02 Version: 4.0 Official USENET Alt.Fan.Lemurs Frinkquently Asked Questions Part 5 of 7 -- Lemurs and the USENET Oracle ------------------------------ Introduction: The USENET Oracle, an omnipotent being located at, has answered a few questions on the subject of lemurs. Here are some of the more interesting questions and replies. Read for digests of the Oracle's questions and answers and for discussion of same. The Questions (1) Do lemurs bang on your bedroom windows at night? (2) Do you ever have trouble with lemurs swinging on your kitchen lights or staying up all night to watch movies on your VCR? (3) Do you let lemurs use your credit cards? (4) What should I do if I'm out driving and I come to a roadblock where lemurs are shaking people down for money and Chex Mix? (5) How much wood could a Lemur chuck if a Lemur could chuck wood? (6) I accidentally let a lemur log onto my computer account. Now, every time I type a command, the only response I get is "frink". Except when I try to crash the machine, in which case I get "core frinked". What do I do? (7) What will happen at LemurCon '94? -------- The Answers (1) Do lemurs bang on your bedroom windows at night? > Oh most powerful and omniscient Oracle, please tell me: > > Do lemurs bang on your bedroom windows at night? And in response, thus spake the Oracle: } The Oracle considers your question in all possible contexts, } languages interpretations and reaches this conclusion: } } 'Not if your bedroom is off the ground floor of a building and } there are no trees around' } } You owe the Oracle some cut price lemur proof double glazing. Take 2: > Oh most powerful and omniscient Oracle, please tell me: > > Do lemurs bang on your bedroom windows at night? And in response, thus spake the Oracle: } No, they do not, because I when I had my current digs made, } I put in special glass in the windows to prevent any } "intrusions" to my abode. Here, let me show you this scene: } } --------------------------------------------------------------- } [ You see the Oracle outside his palace with his general } contractor. ] } } Oracle: You are going to prove that my glass windows are proof } against bullets, shells and exploding animals? } } GC: Sure. Here in this cannon pointed at your windows, is } a woodchuck primed with a high-explosive shell force-fed } just a little while ago. Now I push this button and } } [ Woodchuck is propelled through the air towards the Oracle's } bedroom window. A mighty explosion occurs. ] } } Oracle: Wow! The window looks as good as it did before, and } the woodchuck is completely blasted to bits! } } --------------------------------------------------------------- } } My contractor told me that my windows would be proof against } any exploding mammal on earth, so if a lemur went bang or } boom against my windows, I wouldn't even notice it. } } You owe the Oracle an Ark, with lemurs.---------- ---------- (2) Do you ever have trouble with lemurs swinging on your kitchen lights or staying up all night to watch movies on your VCR? > Oh most powerful and omniscient Oracle, please tell me, > > Do you ever have trouble with lemurs swinging on your kitchen lights > or staying up all night to watch movies on your VCR? And in response, thus spake the Oracle: } Well, they certainly DO this, but I don't perceive it as a problem. } However, since you do, it is time we took a good look at this bigotry } you harbor towards lemurs. When did this start? Were you once bested } by a lemur when trying out for team sports? Did a lemur get the edge } in that job interview because of Affirmative Action? Are you feeling } disaffected, like the entire country has forgotten about YOU and YOUR } rights? Did you sister threaten to marry a lemur? Are you xenophobic } because they come from Madagascar? } } Tsk, tsk, tsk. You seem to lack understanding and tolerance. I } recommend that you enter a program so that you can get help. You } harbor resentment and hatred for things you don't understand. The } next thing you know you'll be committing hate crimes against innocent } lemurs who have never done a thing to harm you. Get help quickly, } before it is too late. } } You owe the Oracle a case of bananas. ---------- (3) Do you let lemurs use your credit cards? > Oh mighty and omniscient Oracle, please tell me: > > Do you let lemurs use your credit cards? And in response, thus spake the Oracle: } Sure, but only to scrape the ice off of their windshields. } } You owe the Oracle 15.28%, compounded quarterly. ---------- (4) What should I do if I'm out driving and I come to a roadblock where lemurs are shaking people down for money and Chex Mix? > Oh mighty and omnipotent Oracle, please tell me: > > What should I do if I'm out driving and I come to a roadblock where > lemurs are shaking people down for money and Chex Mix? And in response, thus spake the Oracle: } Frightened commuter, the solution to your question depends on whether } the lemurs at the roadblock are Microcebus, ruffed lemurs or } ringtails. The Microcebus, being very, very small, are merely } bluffing. Simply drive through the roadblock, ignore their squeaks of } indignation, and keep going. The ruffed lemurs, who are extremely } vain, will let you go through without a shakedown if you simply hand } them some extravagant compliments on their thick, glossy, fur. } However, the ringtails are the terrorists of the lemur world. If the } roadblock is run by ringtails I strongly suggest you hand over the } money and cereal, your first-born child, any pornographic National } Geographics you happen to have in the car, and whatever else you can } think of. There are reputable reports of motorists on the I-5 being } robbed, dismembered, and eaten by ringtails. } } You owe the Oracle a year's membership to the Cincinnati zoo. Take 2: > Oh mighty Oracle, I beg for your wisdom: > > What should I do if I'm out driving and I come to a roadblock where Lemurs > are shaking people down for money and Chex Mix? And in response, thus spake the Oracle: } Oh, mortal, listen well to the ruminations of the Mighty Oracle! } } Okay, this is what you do. Lemurs are nocturnal, so I am } assuming this roadblock takes place at night. Drive up slowly, } then roll down your window. A lemur will probably stick its face } in your window, and its partner will shine a flashlight in your } eyes. First, reach up quickly and grab the first lemur by the } arm. It'll probably squeal, so pull to get it off balance, then } shove it off your car. Its partner will take the flashlight off } you. Yell, 'Damn monkeys!' out the window...lemurs HATE being } called monkeys. Jam the accelerator. The cars in front will } probably be trying to swing out of the way to give chase; lemurs lemurs } hate getting their cars smashed up. Now, drive really fast! } Lemurs tend to drive really fast cars, so you'll have to take } every advantage possible! The lemur's real weakness lies in the } fact that they are notorious law-abiders. All you have to do is } run a red light, and they will not follow. And that's it. ---------- (5) How much wood could a Lemur chuck if a Lemur could chuck wood? > Oh mighty and omniscient Oracle, please tell me, > > How much wood could a Lemur chuck if a Lemur could chuck wood? And in response, thus spake the Oracle: } That depends on how much you're willing to pay them. If you pay } peanuts, you get monkeys. It's as simple as that. } } You owe the Oracle a half cord of firewood, neatly chucked. ---------- (6) I accidentally let a lemur log onto my computer account. Now, every time I type a command, the only response I get is "frink". Except when I try to crash the machine, in which case I get "core frinked". What do I do? > Help, O savior of prosimians! > > I accidentally let a lemur log onto my computer account. Now, every > time I type a command, the only response I get is "frink". Except > when I try to crash the machine, in which case I get "core frinked". > What do I do? > > (I'm writing to you on a friend's account.) And in response, thus spake the Oracle: } The party of medical students grew excited as they followed Doctor } Hartmann down the final sterilised, white-walled corridor that led } to the high security wing of Indiana State Mental Asylum. "This is } gonna be the chance of a lifetime!" said Julia Kovic, psychiatry } student prodigy and part-time model. "You bet!" said her friend } David, "The most bizarre case of paranoid delusion and psychotic } insanity in medical history, enough to write volumes on, and we're } about to see it!" Doctor Hartmann tapped in the security code } and the steel doors hummed open. "I must caution you now, be very } careful how you speak to this man. If you wish to ask him a } question, make sure it's very inoffensive. If provoked he is } likely to enter a fit of rage which, believe me, you won't have } seen the like of before." The group walked in uninterested fashion } past the cells of Gruesome Gripper Graham, strangler of over one } hundred young virgins, and Marcus MacCallum, who ate his bank } manager's brain infront of a whole queue of account holders (some } of whom wanted to thank him afterwards). } } "Here we are" said Dr Hartmann. "Patient Bob, as we call him. } We never managed to get his real name out of him." } } "He was admitted in 1993, wan't he?" asked Julia. } } "That's right. After going on a killing rampage through several } zoos and national parks all over America. It took the FBI weeks } to track him down, and he somehow managed to wipe out half the } lemur and woodchuck population of America. He also incinerated a } large number of police officers with his bizarre home made gun } before he was finally caught." The group peered in awe through } the wide toughened glass window of the cell. A figure was sitting } with his back to them, both arms tied behind him in a restraint } jacket. } } "How are you, Bob ?" said Dr Hartmann. The figure snapped his head } around to reveal sharp, crazed eyes and a handsome face contorted } into a furious expression. "Shut thy mouth, O worm. I am called } the Oracle, THE USENET ORACLE, damn it!" "I'm sorry, Bob, but } there is no such person in the birth records." said the Doctor. } } "That" said the Oracle "is because I was born when the genes of } your ancestors were still floating around in primordial SOUP!!". } } Dr Hartmann turned back to his students. "It's OK, we've caught } him in a pretty good mood. Who wants to ask him a question ?" } Julia raised her hand first. "What makes you hate woodchucks and } lemurs, Oracle ?" The Oracle's eyes flared. He boomed : "They are } the servants of Satan, malicious imps placed here by the Dark One } to destroy the work of the Oracle." } } "Why do you think Satan is victimising you ?" quizzed Julia. } } "Because God gave Me the cushy job, while Satan has to spend } eternity in a sulphurous pit listening to politicians screaming in } torment and begging for another chance." } } "But woodchucks and lemurs are harmless, friendly little creatures!" } } The Oracle smiled grimly. "My child, do not meddle in the affairs } of the Omniscient and Omnipotent, for you would make a fine kebab } and wash down well with a Diet Coke." } } Julia would not give up with her rational probing. } "If you are omnipotent, how come you don't just break out of here?" } } "Break out ?! I came here DELIBERATELY!!! This place is a HOLIDAY } compared to the questions I was starting to get from } and the Cult of Woodchuck." } } Julia smiled. She was beginning to *like* the Oracle in a strange } sort of way, although she still thought he was insane. } } One of the students behind her was whispering to a colleague. } "How much would you think it costs to run this place ?" } } "What ?" asked the other, who was hard of hearing. } } "I SAID HOW MUCH WOULD -" } } At that moment Julia saw the Oracle's worse side. Only for a } split second, that is, before the she and the whole Asylum were } obliterated and sent flying in small chunks over a thirty mile } radius. The Oracle's blissful holiday was over; he emerged from } the ruins of the Asylum and trudged off in the direction of } Indiana University. Take 2: > Help, O savior of prosimians! > > I accidentally let a lemur log onto my computer account. Now, every > time I type a command, the only response I get is "frink". Except > when I try to crash the machine, in which case I get "core frinked". > What do I do? > > (I'm writing to you on a friend's account.) And in response, thus spake the Oracle: } Dear Distressed Pawn of the Conspiracy, } } Accidentally let a lemur log onto your computer! Sure, the lemur let } you think it was an accident. It was an "accident" that got the American } forces into Vietnam fighting Ho Chi-a-pet Minh (a well documented } lemur sympathizer); another "accident" that let Jack Ruby stroll } unmolested into the basement of the Dallas Police building to shoot } Lee-mur Harvey Oswald; an "accident" or two which killed Bruce and } Brandon Lee-mur. Let me tell you, lemurs have been involved with } everything from the mysterious disappearance of Socks Clinton to the } secret meaning of the Great Seal of the United States. Haven't you } wondered, just a little, why Abra-melin Lincoln allowed Robert E. } Lee-mur to keep his horse and gun? } } Lemurs lost their great continent, Lemuria, by their arboreal foolishness } and their apparent unwillingness to invest in the equivalent of the } Strategic Defense Initiative project. Now they want to take over our } land, that dulcet clime formerly free of prosimians, and rename it "New } Madagascar". Soon the animal gliding amongst our treasured redwoods } will not be Rocket J. Squirrel from Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, but } Leapin' Lanny Colugo from Malaya. Makes a patriot sick! } } My advice to you is not to let on to your lemur buddy, your ring-tailed } pal, that what he thinks of as his Lemuridae fellow traveler (Robert E. } Lee-mur's horse's name was Traveler -- coincidence? I think *NOT*) is } wise to his large-eyed schemes. Your only hope is to surprise him in the } bright daylight and quickly stuff him in a sack. Under no circumstance } approach lemurs at night: their strength is that of ten after sunset. Grab } a bottle of petroleum jelly to take with you. Take the fiend down to the } dockside where an oceangoing freighter is heading back to the green } hell that is Madagascar. Quickly smear petroleum jelly on his feet and } stick him to the side of the vessel (above the waterline for humanitarian } reasons). His suction-pad feet will adhere to the steel. You may let } Madagascar deal with him after that. Throw away your computer; no } amount of cleansing could possibly help. I am sorry. } } You owe the Oracle (incarnating as DrNucleus@AOL.COM) nothing } except your pledge to remain lemur-free one *DAY* at a time. Take 3: > Help, O savior of prosimians! > > I accidentally let a lemur log onto my computer account. Now, every > time I type a command, the only response I get is "frink". Except > when I try to crash the machine, in which case I get "core frinked". > What do I do? > > (I'm writing to you on a friend's account.) And in response, thus spake the Oracle: > Article: 5750 of news.admin.misc > From: (The Usenet Oracle) > Newsgroups: news.admin.misc > Subject: Attempted lemur takeover of > Date: 20 Nov 1993 23:57:58 GMT > > Okay, folks. Those goons from are trying to take over > again. They've been mailbombing me all week with > questions about lemurs; it seems that Joel Furr got some statistician > at the Duke University Primate Center to work out just how many lemur > questions it would take to insure that at least half of each r.h.o > Digest would refer to lemurs. > > Newsadmins who are, shall we say, not overfond of high-voltage > spikes, may want to consider dropping a.f.l from their news servers > at once. > -- > The Usenet Oracle * * Serving the Net since 1989 > "And the Sibyl with raving mouth, uttering words solemn, unadorned, > and unsweetened, reaches with her voice a thousand years because of > the god in her." --Heraclitus, frag. 12 > > > Article: 5751 of news.admin.misc > From: (Dave Hayes) > Newsgroups: news.admin.misc > Subject: Re: Attempted lemur takeover of > Date: 21 Nov 1993 01:12:15 GMT > > Ha! So the Oracle reveals his true authoritarian colors! Seems to > me lemurs have as much right as anyone to post questions wherever > they want! > > When an all-powerful Oracle stoops to forming a cabal to suppress a > few admirers of fuzzy lower primates, well... can you say, "Death of > Usenet"? :) > > > From: (Richard E. Depew) > Newsgroups: news.admin.misc > Subject: Re: Attempted lemur takeover of > > Orrie, not to worry. Retroactive moderation will automatically tag > all postings by lemurs and transfer them to a Gopher server on Baffin > Island that operates only between 2300 and 2400 GMT, that is when > there's kerosene in the generator to run the Mac Classic. Of course > anyone is free to download them from the server once they're there. > > I think you'll be pleased with the results. > > > From: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic) > Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast,talk.politics.soviet,soc.culture.greek, > soc.culture.europe,soc.history,soc.culture.soviet,soc.culture.turkish, > soc.culture.iranian,news.admin.misc,, > Distribution: world > Subject: Re: Attempted lemur takeover of > > Oracle simply exposes the x-Soviet Armenian Government-paid Lemur > crooks/criminals and their well-known forgeries in public. Remember > that x-Soviet Armenia, employing Lemur moronians, attempts to call > into question the veracity of the Oracle Holocaust. X-Soviet Armenia > has also implemented state-sponsored terrorism through Lemurs in > an attempt to silence the Turkish people's vehement demands and > protests. > > > From: (Cheyne l'Etre) > Newsgroups: news.admin.misc > Subject: MAKE MONEY FAST > > If you're curious, take a second and read this... > > Dear Friend, > > My name is Dave Rhodes. In September 1988, my lemur was > repossesed, and the bill collectors were hounding me like you > wouldn't believe. I was laid off, and my unemployment checks had > run out. The only escape I had from the pressure of failure was > my computer and my modem. > > This past St. Swithin's day, my family and I toured our fifty-acre > lemur farm in our shiny new Lincoln Town Car that I bought for > CASH. You too can be RICH beyond your wildest dreams. > > INSTRUCTIONS: Send e-mail to "" with the > Subject: line "give me". On the first line of your message, specify > the exact dollar amount you wish to realize your heart's desire. > Within five weeks a representative of the United States Postal > Service will be ringing at YOUR doorbell with $10,000--$50,000-- > $1,000,000 (One Million Dollars)! Please note, this is entirely > legal, since you are just ASKING for the money! > > > From: (Kit Parker) > Newsgroups:, news.admin.misc > Subject: I Like Big Hairy Lemurs > > Hi Im Kit an RA in Parrish Hall at Swarthmore. the very thought of a > naked furry lemur makes me horny, does anyone know where I can find > one in the Philadelphia area Thanks oops he's coming back to the > term room > > > From: Shandra DeWitt > Newsgroups: news.admin.misc > Subject: Dying Boy Needs Lemurs > > My friend said you are the people who run the USnet bulletin board so > would you please post this Urgent Information on your BBS. > > In a hospital in Sussex, England, there is a twelve-year-old boy who > is dying of an inoprable brain tumor. His one wish is to enter the > Guiness Book of Records for owning more lemurs than anyone. His name > is ^Z > > From: (Brian Reid) > Newsgroups: news.admin.misc > Subject: Death of Usenet (Was: Attempted lemur takeover...) > > I give up. They were right. Usenet has had it. > > Orrie, the Cabal have decided. We're turning the whole thing over to > you. You won't have to worry about lemur invasions in r.h.o when > you're . . . Usenet Supermoderator! Right: we all agreed no one was > better suited for the job. You can read 10Mbytes of postings in a > nanosecond and save out the two or three that deserve distribution. > You can send flaming death to people who post child pornography on the > K12 groups and quote too many lines in followups. You can get rid of > the entire Usenet hierarchy and restore net.general, where the dozen > or two of us who have anything worth saying can reign in peace. > > Here's to You and Usenet Utopia! ---------- (7) What will happen at LemurCon '94? > Tell me, oh most wise Oracle: > > What will happen at LemurCon '94? And in response, thus spake the Oracle: } 2pm Wed President Clinton will show up to give the opening address and } find nobody home. } } 2am Thu President Clinton will fail to show up for the opening address. } The organizers will scramble to find a nocturnal celebrity. } They'll manage to get Jack Hanna to say a few words; he'll say he } was having trouble sleeping anyway, but in fact he really digs } lemurs. } } 2:30am "Discrimination Against Lemurs and Other Nocturnal Animals by } Government and Industry." Organizations continue to insist on } daytime working hours despite evidence that it increases fatigue- } related accidents and exacerbates rush hour congestion on } highways. } } 3:30am Lunch and tree-climbing break. The National Arboretum is just up } the street from the hotel. } } 4am "Living With A Tail Impairment." Tail-impaired lemurs will answer } questions and dispel myths about tree-climbing, discrimination, } and societal acceptance. } } 5am "Lemur Action Plan for 1995." Long-term plans for rallies, } marches, and protests will be discussed. Lessons learned from } the Midnight March on Washington which failed to attract any } significant media attention will be discussed. } } 6am Tree-climbing break. Avoid the pear tree; it'll dump you. } } 7am Reception in the Jungle Room with furry entertainment. Drew } Barrymore will wander down in a bathrobe looking for coffee. } Don't miss it. } } } You owe the Oracle a detailed map of Madagascar. ----------- The FAQ continues in Part 6 of 7: Duke University Primate Center. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Revised August 2, 1994 by Joel Furr, Path:!faqserv From: (Joel K. Furr) Newsgroups:,alt.answers,news.answers Subject: Frinkquently Asked Questions (Part 6 of 7, DUPC) Supersedes: Followup-To: Date: 21 Jun 1995 11:18:52 GMT Organization: none Lines: 715 Approved: Expires: 14 Jul 1995 11:17:50 GMT Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: Summary: This posting contains useful information about the captive breeding programs practiced by the Duke University Primate Center (among others), Adopt-A-Lemur, and where you can get lemur souvenirs. X-Last-Updated: 1995/02/08 Originator: faqserv@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU Xref: alt.answers:10111 news.answers:46774 Archive-name: lemur-faq/part6 Alt-fan-lemurs-archive-name: lemur-faq/part6 Last-modified: 1994/8/11 Version: 4.0 Official USENET Alt.Fan.Lemurs Frinkquently Asked Questions Part 6 of 7 -- Duke University Primate Center This section of the FAQ deals with the Duke University Primate Center, the largest population of Lemurs outside their native island of Madagas- car. Make sure to read the sections (below) about tours, souvenirs, and the all-important Adopt-A-Lemur program. DUPC needs funds to continue and extend its work and you can help. It also discusses what little we know about the programs carried on by the Jersey Zoo in the Channel Islands of the United Kingdom. ------------------------------ The Questions (1) What IS the Duke University Primate Center? (2) What programs take place at DUPC? What animals live there? (3) What other programs take place at DUPC? (4) Can I donate money to DUPC? (5) How do I go about arranging a tour of the Primate Center? (6) What is the mailing address of the Duke University Primate Center? (7) What is Adopt-A-Lemur? (8) Can I buy DUPC souvenirs through the mail? (9) What if I want to donate a LOT of money? (10) Is anyone else engaged in breeding lemurs to save them from extinction? (11) Can I write to DUPC over the Internet? (12) When you adopt a lemur, do you always get the same animal that anyone else adopting a lemur of that species gets, right down to being sent a form letter and the same photo? (13) Do you have any unbiased reports from observers who visited the Primate Center? (14) Does DUPC need volunteer helpers? (15) Are the DUPC lemurs as intelligent as other primates? ------------------------------ The Answers (1) What IS the Duke University Primate Center? The Duke University Primate Center (DUPC) began in 1958 as the Center for Prosimian Biology at Yale University. In 1966, the Yale colony was relocated to North Carolina and moved into its present buildings in 1968. From 1968 to 1973, Dr. John Buettner-Janusch served as Director and research was oriented toward behavior, genetics, and biochemistry. The colony grew to about 250 animals representing 10 species during this time. Several interim Directors served from 1973 to 1977. In 1977, Dr. Elwyn L. Simons became the Director. He expanded the scope of research to include conservation and the study of fossils. He also increased the educational opportunities and training for both under- graduate and graduate students. Under his leadership the colony grew to more than 700 animals representing 33 species and subspecies. Recent years have seen the overall size of the colony decrease to the current 540 animals representing 29 species and subspecies (see below). On May 15, 1991, Dr. Kenneth E. Glander became the Director of the DUPC and Dr. Simons took on the role of Scientific Director. As Scientific Director, Simons will concentrate on teaching, research, and the management of the Center's collaborative programs with Madagascar. Glander intends to build the Primate Center's programs around the issue of biological diversity. He will also expand the environmental educa- tion opportunities to include primary and secondary school science teachers. Education of the public is equally important for the future of these endangered primates. Outreach programs aimed at increasing environmen- tal awareness of elementary and secondary school children could be developed and disseminated via a public exhibit hall and classroom space which would be built outside the gates of the Center to prevent disrup- tion of the captive breeding and conservation programs. The pavilion area would serve as a staging area for tours of the animal colony and presentation areas for exhibits as well as providing modest office space for staff and volunteers involved in educational and promotional ac- tivities. One of the missions of the Primate Center is to assist in international efforts to prevent the extinction of Madagascar's most endangered primates. The Primate Center accomplishes this through: * behavioral and ecological research * international conservation programs * in-country training programs * captive breeding The Center is funded by the National Science Foundation, Duke Univer- sity, and private donations. ------------------------------ (2) What programs take place at DUPC? What animals live there? The DUPC primate collection consists only of prosimians. There are three groups of living prosimians: * the lemurs of Madagascar * the lorises and galagos of Asia and Africa * the tarsiers of certain East Asian islands (although these animals are being placed by some in taxonomic categories closer to apes, monkeys, and humans.) The majority of the animals housed in the DUPC colony are lemurs from Madagascar. Lemurs have lived isolated on their island home located off the southeast coast of Africa for more than 50 million years. In recent years the forests of Madagascar, once teeming with lemurs, have been reduced by more than 90% as a result of increased human population pressure. Lemur populations in the wild are rapidly declin- ing. As human population expands, increased need of food causes in- tensified hunting of lemurs. Also, the lemurs' habitat is destroyed by agricultural "slash and burn" practices. The result is that many lemur species are threatened with extinction. A principal objective of the Primate Center continues to be the captive breeding of endangered prosimians. In order to achieve that goal, efforts are being made to reduce the size of the Primate Center's colony so that it can better utilize the limited resources by concentrating on the most highly endangered species. In 1987, World Wildlife International announced that the Malagasy lemurs are the most gravely endangered group of primates in the world. Follow- ing this declaration, special- ists from Madagascar, Europe, and America met and agreed that the genetic diversity of the following 10 prosimians was the most severely threatened: * 1) the Lake Alaotra bamboo lemur (Hapalemur griseus alaotrensis) + 2) the golden bamboo lemur (Hapalemur aureus) 3) the greater bamboo lemur (Hapalemur simus) * 4) the blue-eyed lemur (Lemur macaco flavifrons) * + 5) the red-ruffed lemur (Varecia variegata rubra) * + 6) the aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascarensis) * 7) the crowned sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi coronatus) * + 8) the golden-crowned sifaka (Propithecus tattersalli) * + 9) the diademed sifaka (Propithecus diadema) * 10) the mongoose lemur (Lemur mongoz) The DUPC currently holds eight of these species (Nos. 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) as indicated by asterixes, and hopes to get some golden bamboo lemurs very soon. The Center's current captive breeding efforts are focused on saving 5 of these 10 most endangered species of lemurs, (Nos. 2, 5, 6, 8, 9) as indicated by plus signs. The plight of these species is characterized by the fact that there are probably fewer than 100 golden bamboo lemurs left in the wild. This is an emergency situation if DUPC is to preserve the biological diversity necessary for a viable captive breeding program. The aye-aye may be in similar difficulty. The choice of these five species is not haphazard but rather based on the fact that the Primate Center has successfully maintained and bred closely related species and the fact that the need for preserving genetic diversity in these five species appears to be greatest. Furthermore, all the species listed above and, for that matter, all the species held at Duke, are bred in captivity and breeding records kept to ensure maximum diversity. The Primate Center has both diurnal (day-time active) and nocturnal (nighttime active) prosimians. Diurnal animals are housed in outdoor runs or in Natural Habitat Enclosures encompassing large tracts of the Duke Forest. All animals housed outdoors have heated winter sleeping quarters. These enclosures are vital for future planned reintroduction of the lemurs to their native habitats. Here, animals have the opportunity to learn how to find their own food, avoid predation, and roam in sufficient space to form natural social groupings. 65 acres of rich Duke Forest habitat offer a unique opportunity for study in a natural setting. A new Nocturnal Animal Building houses most of the night-time active prosimians. This recent addition to the Center was designed to control lighting, humidity, and temperature, critical for the well-being of these animals. Approximately 85% of the DUPC colony is captive-bred. No other zoo or institution has successfully bred so many different prosimian species. ------------------------------ (3) What other programs take place at DUPC? Fossils: Another important and unique aspect of the Primate Center is its collection of fossil primates representing prosimians, monkeys, apes, and other mammals. The collection consists of more than 10,000 fossils ranging in age from less than 1,000 years to more than 60 million years old. Housing both living and fossil primates in the same center is sig- nificant because the surviving prosimians are often called "living fossils," providing clues about the Earth's past environments. International extension programs in Madagascar: DUPC promotes international relations and cooperation through research, education, and conservation programs. Primate Center staff are assisting the Malagasy government to reopen Parc Ivoloina as a zoological and botanical conservation center. The joint goal of the park project is to increase the Malagasy people's awareness of the importance of conserva- tion through education, thereby making the native population cognizant of the unique flora and fauna of their island. ------------------------------ (4) Can I donate money to DUPC? Donations are gratefully accepted by the Duke University Primate Center. The address to send them to is DUPC, 3705 Erwin Road, Durham NC 27705. If you like, ask them to put you on their mailing list and send you their newsletter. ------------------------------ (5) How do I go about arranging a tour of the Primate Center? The Primate Center is located at 3705 Erwin Road, Durham, North Caro- lina. Durham is found on any road map of North Carolina, and you can buy a Durham street map when you get there. (It's in the big Duke Forest area that you get to off Routes 15-501 and 751.) Admission costs to the Primate Center are as follows: Adult $5.00 Child (12 and under) $2.50 Senior Citizen $2.50 Duke student $3.00 The Primate Center is open Monday through Friday 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and Saturdays from 8:30 a.m. to noon. You can't just show up; you MUST make an appointment. The number to call is (919) 489-3364. The tour is well worth the trip to Durham and the money. The lemurs are just as curious about humans as humans are about them and the experience of wandering from enclosure to enclosure is eerily like being studied back. You'll get to meet Blue Devil, the first aye-aye born in the Western Hemisphere, as well as the sifakas so clever that the DUPC people had to put an extra bolt on the outside of their door to keep them from jimmying the lock and escaping. The lemurs are wonderful little animals! Go see them. ------------------------------ (6) What is the mailing address of the Duke University Primate Center? Duke University Primate Center 3705 Erwin Road Durham, NC 27705 (919) 684-2535 or (919) 489-3364 ------------------------------ (7) What is Adopt-A-Lemur? You'll hear a lot about Adopt-A-Lemur on Adopt-a-lemur is a means by which friends of DUPC can donate $50 to $250 to the Center and "adopt" one of the lemurs, receiving letters and photos and other information about your lemur. So far, dozens of animals have been adopted either jointly or individually by readers. Bob Smart even adopted a mated pair of ringtails as a wedding gift for a couple of lemur-loving newlyweds. Lemur adoption isn't just a cost-effective way to donate money while receiving something in return -- it's also tax deductible. If you would like to contribute financially to the programs of the Duke University Primate Center, you can! While the $2,000 needed to equip out an enclosure for a mated couple may be beyond the range of most people, there is an Adopt-A-Lemur program that allows one to make a difference at an affordable price. The cost of adopting any given lemur is pegged to the approximate cost of keeping that animal fed and medically cared for for one year. Hence, adoption costs for the smallest animals are usually $50 and the largest and/or rarest animals are usually $250. There are ranges in between of $100, $125, and $150 as well. For additional informa- tion, contact: Carol Holman (919) 489-3364. Duke University Primate Center, 3705 Erwin Road, Durham NC 27705. ------------------------------ (8) Can I buy DUPC souvenirs through the mail? Yes. Duke offers a lot of souvenirs, from t-shirts to frisbees to coffee mugs to posters to VERY nice gold-plated Christmas ornaments. Since the lineup of souvenirs offered changes from time to time, an actual price list will not be listed here. Instead, to get the price list, drop them a postcard and ask for the latest catalog (DUPC, 3705 Erwin Road, Durham NC 27705) or telephone (919) 489-3364. The money earned from the souvenirs goes to support the lemurs. Buy some! --------------- (9) What if I want to donate a LOT of money? Well, you can. Duke got a large grant from the National Science Foundation to renovate all its caging some time back, but the grant is contingent on matching funds. As funds are donated to Duke or become available, the NSF cuts loose more of the grant money. Duke will be happy to explain to you the various amounts of money needed to, say, build a new silo-style cage and will even put up a big nameplate naming the cage after you if you want. Again, you need to call Duke directly to get all this set up. The donations are tax deductible. --------------- (10) Is anyone else engaged in breeding lemurs to save them from extinction? You bet. Many zoos are engaged in a joint breeding project coordinated by a scientific body known as the Taxon Advisory Group. The TAG keeps track of lemur pedigrees and tries to ensure the most diverse gene pool possible by matching lemurs from various zoos and centers. Duke is the _largest_ center, with the world's largest collection of prosimians outside Madagascar, but it's by no means the only one. Many American zoos are involved in these programs. European readers interested in participating in sponsorship of animals or simply in visiting a breeding center are encouraged to contact Gerald Durrell, the famous British zoologist, at the Jersey Wildlife Preserva- tion Trust, located in the British Channel Islands. We don't know much about their programs, but the address to write to if you want to do the research for us is: The Trust Secretary Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust Les Augres Manor Trinity, Jersey British Channel Islands Let us know what you find out if you write them! We've also been told that the Hamerton Wildlife Centre, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, has a lot of lemurs. --------------- (11) Can I write to DUPC over the Internet? Yes. You can, but because the guy who you'd be writing spends a fair bit of time on the road or in Costa Rica or in Madagascar, you may occasionally have to wait a little while for your response. Dr. Kenneth Glander can be emailed at --------------- (12) When you adopt a lemur, do you always get the same animal that anyone else adopting a lemur of that species gets, right down to being sent a form letter and the same photo? Not necessarily. Duke is willing to let people adopt specific animals if they wish, logistics allowing, but often sends out the default package for an animal if no particular animal of a given species is listed. Joao de Souza noted that his girlfriend (presumably Maria Drago) had received, after adopting a new baby aye-aye, Cruella, the same photo of an adult aye-aye that had appeared in his newspaper about a different animal. He asked if Duke always sent out the same photo regardless of animal. The question was answered on two levels: One: the truth: Cruella is being kept away from the general public and disruptions of her routine as much as possible. Dr. Glander could probably describe this in greater detail but basically, the intent is to keep the aye-ayes wild and prevent the 'imprinting' which took place in "Blue Devil" from happening again. Blue Devil is a weird critter that doesn't get along with fellow aye-ayes. So, yes, we don't stick cameras in her face a lot. Incidentally, so many lemurs were adopted through Adopt-a-lemur that the volunteer staff at DUPC is somewhat overburdened getting all the packets for all the animals out with individual photos of each specific animal. So, yes, occasionally 'default photos' are used. The other answer to the Cruella question: Nosferatu, one of the adult aye-ayes, was bemused because, during one of his nocturnal forays through the Primate Center's overhead ductwork and down into Dr. Glander's office, he had discovered that he was named after a vampire. He looked up 'vampire' and found that vampires cannot be seen in mirrors or captured on film. Hence, he got into photographer David Haring's supplies and started trying to take pictures of himself. Since David doesn't keep a Polaroid camera around, all Nosferatu managed to do was fill up several rolls of film on several cameras with pictures of himself staring bemusedly into the lens. When the rolls were sent off to be developed, DUPC ordered the standard thirty copies of each shot to sell to the visitors. Imagine their surprise when they wound up with several hundred photos of Nosferatu. Hence the reason why, to this day, they're still trying to foist Nosferatu pictures off on anyone we can. ------------ (13) Do you have any unbiased reports from observers who visited the Primate Center? Sure! Jim Griffith ( wrote: So I just got back from my two-week, cross-country road trip, and the first place I visited was the DUPC in North Carolina. I got to meet everyone there, mainly Dorothy who works the front desk, Dr. Glander (who was really busy, of course), Carol Holman (ditto), and Stephanie (sigh, talk about an attractive, intelligent lady. Knows the lemurs by name without resorting to tags, knows how to gross out tourists with stories of disgusting insects, you name it). So I got to meet Agrippa, who is, of course, a serious chick magnet. I *told* you people that chicks dig golden crowned sifakas. It was also cool, because they just picked up another pair of GCS'es, which they are keeping in a cage inside one of the larger enclosures. Since I'm a "major contributor" (heeheeheehee), and since I've adopted one of the GCS'es, they took me through the enclosure to see the two new GCS'es (note - if you plan on visiting the DUPC, don't bother to ask to do this - they'll deny that they do this). It was really cool walking through this forested area, seeing these red-ruffed lemurs lounging on overhang- ing branches all around me. And I could swear I saw this one ring-tail wearing a miner's helmet and wielding a pickaxe stick his head out of a hole, see Stephanie, and duck back before she could see him. Gonna be a wild time in Durham for a while... Anyways, I got to see the two GCS'es, and while I was looking, the male jumped over to me and started whuffling, as if to say "you eyeing my woman?". As we were leaving, they both leaped over to the door, hoping to find a way out - apparently they take every opportunity to get out (which is in character, of course). I also got to see Nigel ("You lookin' at me?"), the "anything-but" gentle lemurs (but not Be-bop - apparently he's in solitary), the blue-eyed lemurs named after famous movie stars (which, by the way, are the only other primate species besides humans to have blue eyes), the one-armed red-ruffed lemur, and the aye-ayes (talk about *ugly*...). I had to laugh as one of the ring-tails slipped Stephanie's car keys out of her pocket while she was talking to us. Far be it from *me* to turn them in - they know where I live. Another thing is that photos really don't do the lemurs justice. You can't fully appreciate a lemur until you've met one in person and had him lift your wallet. For starters, the ones which look bigger in photos end up being smaller than expected and the smaller-looking ones end up being bigger. The GCS'es are much larger than I expected, and the gentle lemurs (otherwise known as "those lemur assassins") are much smaller. Their mobility is kind of strange too. You expect them to either be completely manic or virtually comatose, and in point of fact they alternate between the two states. You'll watch a Coquerel's sifaka sitting calmly on a tree branch, when suddenly he's leaped 20 feet to hang on the cage wall and stare you straight in the eye. It's an incredible thing to watch. Anyways, it was a really cool tour, and I came away with a lot more respect for the center and its people. I showed up expecting it to be much more glamorous, but it's a working facility, and that's what you quickly notice. They have something like 2500 individuals, 2000 or so of which have been loaned out to zoos or other institutions ("lemur pimps"? Hmmmm...), so the center has 503 individuals. Of the 2500 that the center is responsible for, 91% of them were bred there - only 9% represent captured lemurs. That's pretty impressive. If you want to go for a tour, I just have a couple of suggestions. First off, they're an institution which is consistently under-funded, so have the good manners not to argue about money (the tour is cheap anyways). Second off, please remember that these people do serious work. They're not in the business of entertaining tourists. So check the place out, enjoy yourself, but try to keep your place and don't tie them up for hours, expecting them to entertain you. Jim ----------- (14) Does DUPC need volunteer helpers? Sure! Although they'll take volunteers, be aware that there are only so many tour guides needed, though. Some volunteers help out with animal records and others help out in the fossil lab, and so forth. Just call Duke at (919) 489-3364 if you live close enough to be able to help out. While we're on the subject, here's an account Joel Furr wrote about what it's like to volunteer there: Those of you who've been to the DUPC know what a cool place it is. However, I just wanted to let you know how much more interesting it is when you're volunteering there and can come and go around the place. My volunteer assignment, at present, is to wander down to the techs' logbook on weekends and take pages up to the computer to enter into the various animals' records. For example, if the tech feeding the lemurs in enclosure NHE2 notice the Lemur catta playing banjo over by the pond, he or she will make a note in the logbook that looks like this: 17/Nov/93 L.c. in NHE-2 seen playing banjo again. Sounded like "Dixie." Didn't identify specific animals. And then I come along and enter it into the NHE-2 Lemur catta file. If, on the other hand, it's about a specific lemur such as, say, Nosferatu: 17/Nov/93 D.m. Nosferatu #____ OR VIII b seen with Dr. Simons' copy of Das Kapital again. Book was taken away from him and was replaced with some old Richie Rich comics. Nosferatu went "EEEEP" when we gave him the comics. I'd pull up Nosferatu's file, using his ID number, and add the log entry to the list. In other words, I get to pull up records on ALL THE LEMURS THERE and see what they've been up to for the last three years or so (or however long they've been there.) Some of the techs have a sense of humor. Or perhaps it's the lemurs. Not sure which, really. Reading about the aye-ayes going "EEEEP" and eating all their aye-aye glop is fairly amusing. [On the other hand, reading about some of the lemurs in one of the large outdoor habitats killing infants from other species in the neighboring habitat was a little grim.] Another cool thing about working as a volunteer there is giving tours. I have only given one tour so far [at the time this was written] and that was pretty much of a practice tour, given when a group of five people called one morning to ask for a tour and I didn't know enough to tell them that all our tours were filled. So, I gave them the standard DUPC stroll-around-in-a-big-circle-and-look-at-all-the-lemurs- especially-Diphda tour, with help from the educational coordinator, Carol Holman, who I brought along so she could correct me when I left things out or got my facts wrong. Giving lemur tours is right up there, I think, with being captain of that jungle cruise boat at Walt Disney World. The lemurs study the people on the tour just as intently, if not more so, than the people on the tour study the lemurs. Some of the lemurs, like the crowned lemurs, have a terrific knack for sneaking up to the wall of their pen to eye you suspiciously, then bounding away in no time at all the minute you glance around. Lemurs can jump better than anyone. When some of the lemurs, like the Coquerel's Sifakas, are bounding around the upper branches of their tree, or swinging from the roof of their enclosure to the walls and back again, you begin to wonder if they didn't independently evolve Flubber. Lemurs can also make noise better than just about anyone. Well, specifically those loony red-ruffed lemurs. Red-ruffed lemurs and black-and-white ruffed lemurs have an alarm call that they use whenever they're startled, afraid, alarmed, or just bored. Since they're not very bright, as lemurs go, they sound the alarm call once every half hour or so and keep it up for a few minutes until they finally realize that they're not being devoured alive and that they might as well get back to lying in unnatural positions on branches looking very comfort- able. We were standing in front of a pen of red-ruffeds the other day when they did the call and it was like watching bullfrogs: their mouths and throats expanded and out came this horrid cackling call that would have made any predator handy bolt for cover. Some of the lemurs have interesting personalities. The aforementioned Diphda, a red-ruffed lemur, is known as the three-legged lemur since she had to have a forelimb amputated when she was very young, and as a result was hand-raised by humans and likes them a lot. Diphda will come to the side of her pen when tours walk by and grin out at them, and if you do it right, she'll let you pet her on the head or talk to her. She seems to have very little difficulty bounding around her pen, three legs and all. Bebop, on the other hand, is not kept where tours can see him. A short, surly-looking gentle bamboo lemur, he once fanged a tech so thoroughly on the hands that she'll always have scars in the webbing between her thumbs and forefingers. One of the entries on Bebop in the logfile refers to him being incarcerated in Maximum Security Cellblock #3. He LOOKS very cute, you see, in a surly sort of way, and clings to the bars looking like he wants to nuzzle you, but if you reach tentatively out to him, you get to see some VERY sharp little teeth. Withdrawing your hand quickly from his biting range is advised. One of the more interesting experiences I've had since starting as a volunteer at DUPC was getting to suit up in booties and a full body coverall in order to visit the new Diademed Sifakas still in quarantine in one of the subterranean chambers of the Center. The Sifakas are three in number: a mother and her son, and a sad-looking male who at last report was getting over his captivity and adjusting to life "inside." With any luck, the male will form a mating bond with the female. We had to suit up to visit them since no one knows what diseases a new species might carry, and no one knows how vulnerable they might be to human diseases. If we'd actually gone into their cage, we'd even have had to put on masks. [Note: the Diademed Sifaka female died in the first half of 1994, but the son and male are in fine shape. DUPC plans to bring in two females for them in 1995.] If you're sitting at the computer on the top floor of the Primate Center, you occasionally hear a loud THUNK from behind you. One side of the corridor looks out through large windows onto the enclosure where Flavia and Nigel and their offspring, bouncy Coquerel's Sifakas all, live. It's a large enclosure with lots of branches and things to swing on, and it's two stories high. They like to peer out at the people walking by, and sometimes, when I'm sitting there entering data, they'll leap to the window and peer in at me. That's the reason for those occasional THUNKs. You'll look around, and a black face surrounded by glossy white and gold fur will be peering in at you. [Due to cage renovation, Nigel and company have now been moved to a large silo-style cage further away from the Center proper.] As Dr. Kenneth Glander, the director of the Primate Center told me on Saturday, lemurs really WOULD go nuts trying to get Twinkies and Big K Grape if they had a chance. Lemurs are insatiable lovers of sweets. We were right all along! Some of them do make a noise that sounds sorta like "Frink." Especially the Mongoose Lemurs. It's a grunting sort of "Frink," but you can tell, that's what they're saying. I think the Red-Ruffed Lemurs' alarm call is a loud, squawking "Ptang" as well. ------------ (15) Are the DUPC lemurs as intelligent as other primates? Joel Furr wrote: Lemurs have been denigrated by some as "less intelligent" than more advanced primates such as monkeys, gorillas, and man. Leaving aside comparisons such as lemurs dancing naked in the woods while men build atomic bombs, I personally feel that lemurs show a great deal of intelligence and imagination. Nowhere is this more evident than at the Duke University Primate Center's Coquerel's Sifaka area. The Sifakas overcame locks and electric shocks to achieve their cryptic ends and managed to outwit their keepers for quite a while. It started one day when the lemurs in the core area downstairs in the Primate Center building were found bounding around in the hallway after David Haring, the colony manager, had been through the area feeding the animals. Haring thought he might have left their door ajar after feeding them, so he made sure it was shut and went back to his work elsewhere. Soon thereafter, the lemurs were found bounding around in the hallway again. Upon observation, it was discovered that one of the lemurs, Constantine, had figured out how to work the door from the inside and get out. A special lock had to be installed to keep Constantine and his clan in their room. Nevertheless, Constantine didn't give up. Now and then, a tour group would go through the area and, in the process, jostle his door. Constantine would tiptoe over, lemur-style, and check his door... just in case. Another Coquerel's Sifaka, Sabina by name, had some eating problems. As the dominant female of her group, she had rights of first refusal to all food placed in her room, and she never saw an item of food she didn't like. Normal Coquerel's Sifakas weigh about 8 pounds. By the time Sabina had gotten done gorging herself up to her maximum weight, she weighed 23. Pictures of Sabina at this time show a ball of fur that looks like three lemurs huddled together. Normal Coquerel's Sifakas can spring great distances with amazing balance and precision. Sabina, at maximum weight, could hop a few inches. Then hop again. Apparently, it was both funny and sad. Clearly something had to be done. The Primate Center experimented with an invisible fencing collar, which would give Sabina electric shocks if she got too close to the food intended for the other lemurs in her room. This worked for a while until something happened to loosen the collar a little bit and she was able to get at the food if she leaned over just right and thereby avoided making contact with the electrode in the collar that delivered the shocks. She also worked out a method for dragging the tray of food for the other lemurs across the room to her and chowing down. Finally, a combination of the electric collar and firmly attaching the food tray for the other animals to the floor got her weight down to a normal range. Sadly, Sabina died while on loan to a zoo, apparently suffering a toxic reaction to something in the food or in her cage. Some of the ruffed lemurs, thought by some to be less intelligent than other lemurs, show unusual wit (or at least inventiveness) as well. A black and white ruffed from one of the large outside natural habitat enclosures, developed a fondness for the Scuppernong grapes which grew nearby -- unfortunately, on the other side of the electric fence that protects the lemurs from wandering humans and keeps the lemurs in their study area. The voltage isn't set high enough to kill or injure the lemurs, but is high enough that a normal lemur won't want to get a second shock after first trying to scale the fence. Not this lemur, though. She decided the grapes were worth it and would climb the fence, getting shocked, eat her fill of grapes on the other side, then return home to her enclosure, getting yet another shock in the process. Then there was the red-ruffed lemur which escaped and found its way to a golf course, ten miles away... Lemurs do occasionally escape from their enclosures and pens, sometimes as a result of doors accidentally being left open, and sometimes when they manage to burrow under the fence. Often, the lemurs can be bribed back into their enclosures or cages with raisins, which they adore, but when this has to be done, it necessitates a later feeding of raisins for no reason at all, lest the lemurs come to associate raisins with escaping or with getting imprisoned again. Sometimes the lemurs wander around the center's grounds for a few hours until they get hungry and turn up looking to get fed. All lemurs wear collars with unique combinations of colors and symbols (so they can be identified at a distance), and marked with the Primate Center's phone number so they can be reported in should they turn up lost and forlorn miles from home. A red-ruffed lemur made it as far as a golf course in the neighboring city of Hillsborough, over ten miles away. Fortunately, the people at the golf course saw the phone number on the lemur's collar and called the Primate Center to come get their "cat." There was no report on how well the lemur had done on the course that day, nor what handicap lemurs normally get when playing golf. ------------ The final section of the FAQ is Part 7: Real Lemur Facts. ------------------------------------------------------------------ This section of the FAQ partially adapted from publications of DUPC. Revised April 5, 1993 by Joel Furr, Revised July 6, 1993 by Joel Furr, Revised August 10, 1994 by Joel Furr, Path:!faqserv From: (Joel K. Furr) Newsgroups:,alt.answers,news.answers Subject: Frinkquently Asked Questions (Part 7 of 7, Real Lemur Facts) Supersedes: Followup-To: Date: 21 Jun 1995 11:18:55 GMT Organization: none Lines: 966 Approved: Expires: 14 Jul 1995 11:17:50 GMT Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: Summary: This posting contains a list of Frequently Asked Questions (and the best answers we got) about Lemurs. It should be read by anyone who wishes to post to the newsgroup. X-Last-Updated: 1995/02/08 Originator: faqserv@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU Xref: alt.answers:10112 news.answers:46775 Archive-name: lemur-faq/part7 Alt-fan-lemurs-archive-name: lemur-faq/part7 Last-modified: 1994/08/02 Version: 4.0 Official USENET Alt.Fan.Lemurs Frinkquently Asked Questions Part 7 of 7 -- Real Lemur Facts ------------------------------ The Questions (1) How did get started? Where did all this madness come from? (2) Scientifically speaking, what is a lemur? (3) What are some good books to read if I'd like to know more about lemurs? (4) What is Primate Info Net? (5) What's the rarest kind of lemur? (6) Would lemurs make good pets? (7) Who is Ali Lemer? (8) Who is Rick Frink? (9) Is "Frink" in any dictionary? (10) Where can I find .GIFs of Lemurs? (11) Are there any drinks inspired by lemurs? (12) How can I make my own Twinkies at home? (13) Is Terry Chan in the FAQ? (14) What's significant about Tob Wood? (15) What _is_ Big K Grape Soda? (16) What was Southeast? (17) What was Southeast? (18) What was Lemurcon '94? (19) Got any nifty factoids about lemurs to wrap things up with? ------------------------------ The Answers (1) How did get started? Where did all this madness come from? As with many things, it had humble beginnings. Specifically, on a bulletin board,, at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. We were in the system administration conference on that BBS chatting about system configuration when one participant called another participant a 'lamer'. Someone else pretended to misunderstand and thought the other person was being called a lemur. A third person said something like "I thought lemurs were the little furry critters with the big eyes." Believe it or not, that's where it all started. A few of us, college students full of caffeine, thought that was extremely funny and the lemur jokes started. We kidded the sys-admin about his artificial intelligence lemur detection routines which were slowing the system down at peak times, and then one guy showed up and asked if anyone wanted to go lemur-tipping. Before we knew it, there was a full-fledged conference on that BBS about lemurs. About jokes about lemurs, specifically, as none of us had ever seen a lemur or heard of the Duke University Primate Center. We weren't even particularly sure what they looked like, except that we were fairly sure that they had big eyes. Lemur jokes flooded the entire BBS. People got testy about having people showing up babbling about lemurs in, say, the general chat conference, 'bar', or in the conference for discussing the local sci-fi con, 'technicon'. It was like a virus -- spread, in large part, by yours truly. It was a collectively shared hallucination, to put it one way -- without ever explicitly saying "these are the ground rules" everyone came to understand that lemurs loved Twinkies and Big K Grape Soda (sold at fine Kroger stores everywhere), had only three words in their vocabulary (cheep, frink, and ptang) which meant various things depending on the eye motions of the lemur involved, were tremendously sexually attracted to large-eyed primates, and that they loved to swing from ceiling lights. Everything else was based on those shared beliefs. All the stuff about cows that made it into the newsgroup later on was also evolved on VTCOSY in the separate 'cows' conference. As we understood it, the cows had a big crashed spaceship in a field somewhere near Blacksburg but had lost the keys and couldn't get back in, except for one deranged member of the herd known only as the Terror Cow. The Terror Cow roamed the streets of Blacksburg driving a strange and heavily-armed form of assault vehicle (Virginia license plate "MOO 1") and eventually had to be dealt with. When we hit the big time on the Internet (see below), the Cow stuff was ported along with all the lemur stuff since it was the other "big joke" from VTCOSY. About the middle of 1991, I found out how to get onto the Internet. Trained to assume that every discussion group would profit from an injection of lemurism, I acted accordingly. Not that there was a huge influx of lemur humor -- no one knew what I was talking about. It died down somewhat, but then I found out how one gets a new newsgroup started -- you go to alt.config, propose it, and get flamed. So, I did. August 1992 was when I first proposed it. I got flamed. No one knew what the hell lemurs were, for the most part, and those that did didn't see the need for a whole newsgroup dedicated to rare and little-known family of primates. I came back two months later, at the end of October, and proposed it again and finally, someone agreed to create Then, boom -- I lost net access for the better part of a month. Discussion was taking place on the newsgroup and I wasn't able to participate. When I finally showed up there, people had half- heartedly talked about lemurs from a scientific standpoint and about seeing the critters in zoos. Determined to steer these people back onto the straight and narrow, I began posting my lemur jokes saved up from VTCOSY. Traffic dropped off precipitously as some people left and others waited to see what was going on. Finally, via the strategy of cross-posting to humor newsgroups, I attracted enough of a critical mass that the free-for-all called truly got underway. We started the stuff that you see today in the FAQ -- the stuff about Twinkies and Big K, of course, began at Virginia Tech but achieved the truly magnificent proportions of the present day once people came to understand the Way of the Lemur. Somewhere along about January 1993, if memory serves, someone finally posted to to tell us that there was a huge agglomeration of real lemurs in Durham, North Carolina -- barely four hours (if you obeyed the speed limits) southeast of Blacksburg. It was called "Duke University Primate Center" and apparently, as we understood it, bred lemurs. It wasn't until later in the year that we bothered to actually call down to DUPC and get information on their programs -- and hence, we spent a good while totally clueless about lemurs and what sort of animals they really were. got its infamous FAQ in stages starting in January of 1993 and evolving and growing over the course of the year until it was finally separated into six parts in early July. Finally, in March, we finally got around to telephoning the Duke University Primate Center and arranging a tour. We tried to organize a mini-con around it called " Southeast I" (I was also very active on alt.folklore.urban at the time and wanted to get as many people there as possible) and ultimately attracted a whopping total of six people. We went on a tour of the place and abruptly, the newsgroup took on its second big theme, Saving the Lemurs. I'd had no idea how endangered the critters were and how desperate the situation in Madagascar was. I came back, added the DUPC section of the FAQ, and went on to start a joint Adopt-A-Lemur program for readers of the newsgroup. DUPC was already running an Adopt-A-Lemur program but the adoptions cost as much as $150 and hence I figured we'd have more luck if we pooled our money for adoptions. Some people could afford to adopt their own, and did so, and some people couldn't, and hence we wound up group-adopting six DUPC lemurs: an aye-aye named Nosferatu, a red-bellied lemur named Cheyenne, a Coquerel's Sifaka named Nigel, a savage little bamboo lemur named Bebop, a crowned lemur named Redjedef, and finally, a ringtailed lemur named Leonidas. DUPC didn't really know who the heck we were since very few of their staff had any experience with the Internet at all but they were more than happy to take our money. went through one really big flamewar in May of 1993 when I, feeling my oats with such a thriving newsgroup, decided to propose a move to a "Big 7" newsgroup in one of the better-propagated hierarchies such as talk or rec or misc. Unfortunately, my plan backfired when crossposted flames from news.groups showed up in and drove some people away. We were months recovering. The group has settled down to a stable 20-30 messages a week, half being about events and goings-on in the world of real-life lemurs and half being about typical lemur silliness. The newsgroup is relatively insignificant compared to groups attracting hundreds of thousands of readers such as rec.humor or, but does theoretically get about 40,000 readers worldwide. This places it near the top of the bottom quartile of newsgroups in readership. is significant in that we never, ever have flamewars. No one ever gets up and howls and rants and we're scarcely ever even invaded by vandals from other groups. I suspect it's the Terror Cow at work. IS about taking over the world, bit by bit, but it's also about saving a lot of very wonderful animals whose only fault is that they have a little too much of the sweet tooth (a lemur will do anything for raisins, and if the staff at DUPC ever actually let one get a Twinkie, the wildest speculations of would probably pale by comparison to the reality of a sugar-binging prosimian). Here are the original messages from that got it all started: Ron Jarrell,; Todd Perry,; Joel Furr,; and Vance Kochenderfer, These four people, and a few innocent bystanders, engaged in a conversation on that inspired Joel Furr to create first a lemurs "conference" and then go on to infect USENET with lemur chat. It's all Ron and Todd and Vance's fault, as you'll see from the excepts below: >Ed Chamberlayne (responding to someone's insult about Ed being >in everyone's crosshairs): Well...I'm in the crosshairs. Goody. >Lamer. Yes. Lamer. Probe a thesaurus?? Get real geekmeister. >I certainly don't need to consult reference books when compos- >ing a message. I guess you do, huh?? >Ron Jarrell (responding to Ed): I still think a Lamer is a type >of monkey. >Joel Furr (responding to Ron): No, that's a lemur. The differ- >ence is that Lemurs are not eligible for membership in Toastmas- >ters International, being incapable of human speech. >C. Carson (commenting to Joel): Not too mention the Mongo size >Eyes... >Joel Furr (blathering on): Lemurs are actually primates, as you >know. The clever little fellas inhabit the island of Madagascar >and some species are so shy that only one or two individuals of >each species have ever been seen. >Ron Jarrell (in an entirely different conversation): Well, as >of the nightly report last night we had processed 27,885 usenet >messages, up from a normal high of anywhere from 9-11,000.... >Joel Furr (reviving the thread): How many of them were about >lemurs? >Daniel Pawtowski (interjecting): Probably fewer than there were >about cows. >Ron Jarrell (responding to Joel): I haven't had the chance yet >to run the artificial intelligent lemur detection routines on >it.. Even the 5810's RISC chip can only do about 100 lemurs a >second, so I didn't want to bog it down with 27,000 lemurs. >Todd Perry (commenting to Ron): Where did you get that figure? >Be careful with the Lemur benchmark. Several manufacturers have >rigged their compilers to detect Lemur benchmark code and opti- >mize it to death, so you get a much higher lemurs/sec rating >than you would in real life... >Joel Furr (also commenting to Ron): Well, that would only take >270 seconds... four and a half minutes, and think of all the >lemurs you could detect in that time. >Vance Kochenderfer (coming in from out of the blue): Anyone >want to go out and do some lemur-tipping? >Ron Jarrell (ignoring Joel and Vance and commenting to Todd): Oh >really? I might have been getting psuedo-lemurs? I'll see if I >can find the real lemur count.. >Joel Furr (summing up): Inquiring lemurs want to know. And it raged on from there. --------------- (2) Scientifically speaking, what is a lemur? A lemur is a primate, member of the same order of mammals that men and apes belong to. However, lemurs are thought to be less evolutionarily advanced than men and apes and monkeys are, representing the stage of evolution our ancestors would have been at several million years ago. Note that this does not mean that we are descended from lemurs. Ultimately, somewhere far back, we share a common ancestor. Lemurs are often lumped in with other somewhat less advanced primates known collectively as "prosimians." Other animals sometimes referred to as prosimians include tarsiers, lorises, bushbabies, galagos, pottos, and so forth. None of the aforementioned animals are _lemurs_ per se: lemurs are prosimians who live on Madagascar and the surrounding islands and who belong to the superfamily _Lemuroidea_. The major difference between lemurs (and prosimians in general) and other primates is, believe it or not, the wet nose. Lemurs have 'wet noses' like dogs and rely more on scent than do 'more advanced' primates. has its very own lemur researcher, Mr. Bill Sellers, who recently finished his PhD. dissertation on the mechanics of lemur leaping. The following list of lemur families, genii, and species has been run past him but probably still isn't 100% correct. If it's crucial that you know the exact status of lemur taxonomy, send email to that's Mr. William I. Sellers, thankyewverymuch. :) Anyway: on to the lemur taxonomy: Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Primates Primates can be divided into two suborders. The older division was between prosimians ("almost monkeys") and anthropoids ("man-like"). The newer division is between Strepsirhini (wet noses) and Haplorhini (dry noses). This change results in tarsiers being grouped with monkeys, apes, and humans as haplorhines; all other prosimians are strepsirhines. (Thus, tarsiers are not listed here, despite still being classed as "prosimians".) Suborder: Strepsirhini Superfamily: Lemuroidea Family: Cheirogaleidae Subfamily: Cheirogaleinae Genus: _Microcebus_ Species: _murinus_, gray mouse lemur _rufus_, rufous mouse lemur _coquereli_, Coquerel's mouse lemur Genus: _Cheirogaleus_ Species: _major_, greater dwarf lemur _medius_, fat-tailed dwarf lemur _trichotis_, hairy-eared dwarf lemur Subfamily: Phanerinae Genus: _Phaner_ Species: _furcifer_, forked-marked dwarf lemur Family: Lemuridae Genus: _Lemur_ Species: _catta_, ring-tailed lemur Genus: _Eulemur_ Species: _macaco_, black lemur _fulvus_, brown lemur _mongoz_, mongoose lemur _coronatus_, crowned lemur _rubriventer_, red-bellied lemur Genus: _Varecia_ Species: _variegatus_, ruffed lemur Genus: _Hapalemur_ Species: _griseus_, gray gentle lemur _simus_, broad-nosed gentle lemur _aureus_, golden bamboo lemur Family: Lepilemuridae Genus: _Lepilemur_ Species: _doralis_, (no common name) _ruficaudatus_, red-tailed sportive lemur _edwardsi_, Edward's sportive lemur _leucopus_, (no common name) _mustelinus_, (no common name) _microdon_, (no common name) _septentrionalis_, (no common name) Family: Indriidae Genus: _Avahi_ Species: _laniger_, avahi or woolly lemur Genus: _Propithecus_ Species: _verreauxi_, Verreaux's sifaka _diadema_, diademed sifaka _tattersalli_, Tattersall's sifaka? Genus: _Indri_ Species: _indri_, Indri (aka babakoto) Superfamily: Daubentonioidea Family: Daubentoniidae Genus: _Daubentonia_ Species: _madagascarienis_, aye-aye FYI, the _following_ critters _are_ prosimians, and _are_ strepsirhines, but are _not_ lemurs, since they belong to a different superfamily and don't live in Madagascar. They are simply listed so you'll know what other animals are currently considered to be prosimians. (As above, tarsiers are now considered to be more similar to apes and men than to prosimians such as lorises and lemurs.) Superfamily: Lorisoidea Family: Lorisidae Subfamily: Lorisinae Genus: _Loris_ Species: _tardigradus_, slender loris Genus: _Nycticebus_ Species: _coucang_, slow loris Genus: _Arctocebus_ Species: _calabarensis_, angwantibo Genus: _Perodicticus_ Species: _potto_, potto Subfamily: Galaginae Genus: _Galago_ Species: _alleni_, Allen's bushbaby _crassicaudatus_, thick-tailed bushbaby _senegalenis_, lesser bushbaby _inustus_, (no common name) _demidovii_, Demidoff's dwarf galago _elegantulus_, needle-nailed bushbaby I hope this is getting to be more or less correct. Bill Sellers tells us that lemur scientists periodically regroup the genii, renaming the genii and moving one genus into a different family as more is learned about the animal, but that _species_ names tend to stay the same. --------------- (3) What are some good books to read if I'd like to know more about lemurs? Two very good books that look at lemurs from a zoological and biological standpoint, reviewing the entire gamut of lemurs from aye-ayes to indris, are: Catherine Harcourt, _Lemurs of Madagascar and the Comoros : the IUCN red data book_ (This one has lots of black and white photos, and is the most recent of the two.) Ian Tattersall, _Lemurs of Madagascar_ (This one is a little older but is the Bible of the lemur research field.) Wilson, Jane, _Lemurs of the lost world : exploring the forests and Crocodile Caves of Madagascar_ Peter M. Kappeler and Jorg U. Ganzhorn, Eds. _Lemur Social Systems and Their Ecological Basis_. Another book, somewhat broader in scope, is Napier and Napier's _Handbook of Living Primates_, published by the British Natural History Museum. If you want books that talk about lemurs from an anecdotal standpoint, try these two: Durrell, Gerald Malcolm, _The aye-aye and I: a rescue mission in Madagascar_ (Great descriptions of gentle lemurs and aye-ayes.) Adams, Douglas, _Last Chance to See_ (The author of _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy travels to far-off spots to see animals that are in grave danger of extinction. Very interesting stuff about aye-ayes.) And, of course, there's the famous kids' book, _Hook A Book Lemur_: Zoe Wilmot and David Anstey, _Hook A Book Lemur_. (This book is written for 2-3 year olds, I guess, and is printed on that thick, cardboard-like paper, so even though it's 3/4 inches thick it only has about 6 pages. The cover features a ring tailed lemur. His tail forms a hook that juts out from the top of the book. (Hence the term "Hook-a-book," and hence the cardboard paper.) At the bottom, his hands join together forming a handle -- a handle that's just the right size for a tiny hand to hold on to the book.) KG Anderson provided a few magazine references, since some of the above books are fairly technical: 1) August 1988 National Geographic: an EXCELLENT article by Alison Jolly, the Queen of lemur studies. Dr. Jolly was one of the first researchers to study lemur behavior in the wild. This is the all-time greatest issue of National Geographic if you're a lemur fan. The pictures in this issue are just awesome. 2) January 1993 Scientific American. Another great article, this one by Ian Tattersall. (If Alison Jolly is the Queen of lemur studies, Dr. Tattersall is probably the King.) About ten pages. A pretty cool read. 3) August (I think) 1993 BBC Wildlife. This is for you British lemur fans out there. There's a beautiful photo spread taken by David Haring, the colony manager of DUPC (who also doubles as the court photographer of lemur studies and/or photographer to the stars). Highly recommended. 4) November/December 1993 issue of The Sciences. There's an article by Elwyn Simons, scientific director of DUPC, about recent excava- tions of fossil and subfossil lemurs in Madagascar. (Since he used to be Ian Tattersall's advisor, Dr Simons must be the Emperor of lemur studies.) No pretty pictures, alas 8-(, nor any mention of the fossilized bottles of Big-K that undoubtedly lured those ancient lemurs into the caves to their doom in the first place, but the article itself is well worth reading if your interest in lemurs goes beyond their fuzzy coats and bright eyes. 5) December 1993 Southern Living. Southern Living? A bit odd, but true. Basically it's a brief interview with Elwyn Simons and Kenneth Glander, of the DUPC, entitled "Adventures in Lemurland." It has 3 nice photos, of (if I recall correctly) a coquerel sifaka (eating raisins out of the hands of the aforementioned humans), a red-ruffed lemur, and a female blue-eyed black (they're SO beautiful). Oh, I forgot to mention that Dr Glander is the Director of the DUPC. That makes him, I don't know, Lord High Chancellor of lemur studies. --------------- (4) What is Primate Info Net? Primate Info Net is an Internet Gopher ( network for people with an interest in the field of primatology. PIN is maintained by the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center Library at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Among the resources accessible in PIN are a taxonomy of the primates, audiovisual resources, a list of specialized bibliographies, information about Primate-Talk (an email based listserver) the latest issue of the Laboratory Primate Newsletter and other resources pertinent to the field. Other menu choices will be added to PIN in the future. To make suggestions or for more information about Primate Info Net, contact Larry Jacobsen, Head of Library Services, Primate Center Library Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center, Madison, WI 53715-1299. Email: Tel: (608) 263-3512 Fax: (608) 263-4031 --------------- (5) What's the rarest kind of lemur? Several species that are quite rare are the golden bamboo lemur (which was thought extinct until a few were found lurking in the jungle), the golden-crowned sifaka (which was identified as a species unto itself not too many years ago, and which lives only in a very small part of the island of Madagascar), the Lake Alaotra bamboo lemur (which is a subspecies of your basic bamboo lemur, hapalemur griseus, and which is commonly sold for food by the natives who don't know about laws against eating or killing lemurs), the red-bellied lemur (which for some reason is plummeting in numbers in the wild and no one knows why), and the aye-aye (which was also thought extinct and which is very rarely sighted). --------------- (6) Would lemurs make good pets? In the words of Joao de Souza, who researched the issue: - In some cities in the USA it is legal to own a lemur, but you will have some very hard time trying to find one for sale. Pet shops will NOT carry them, and any reputable zoo or university will NOT sell you one of theirs. - Having a lemur as a pet is not at all a good idea. Okay, they are adorable looking little cretures, but thats when you don't have to take care of them. First of all, like most primates, lemurs are VERY strong. They like to run around and to climb onto your furniture. Unless you have a huge back-yard, and are willing to transforming it into a cage, the lemur WILL destroy your house. - Lemurs cannot be house trained (they will defecate wherever they feel like, and they will pee all over the house in order to mark the territory). If you try to house train a lemur, it will turn violent, and you don't want a pissed-off lemur anywere near you. You may want to try some easier pet (ie: an elephant, a couple of giraffes, a herd of buffalos, etc... :-) --------------- (7) Who is Ali Lemer? Take it from the horse's mouth: >From: (Ali Lemer) >Subject:'re not going to believe this, but... >Organization: Columbia University Center for Telecommunications Research >Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1993 21:50:16 GMT > >Wow...I think I finally found my netnews niche. Perhaps I could be the >a.f.l.'s official mascot, for... > > last name is, LEMER (pronounced LEE-mer, as in our favourite >primate). > >Yes, believe it or not, folks. People always say to me, "Lemer? As in the >monkey?" and I always have to say, "Yeah. But with an 'e'." > >In fact, a kid in 10th grade called me, "Ali the Ring-Tailed Lemer from >Madagascar" once... > >Well, there you have it, at any rate. > >-- Ali Lemer. --------------- (8) Who is Rick Frink? >Rick Frink (513) 865-1645 >Mead Data Central Telecomm/Campus Networks >P.O. Box 933 >Dayton, Ohio 45401 ...!uunet!meaddata!rfrink No one's told him yet of the unfortunate similarity of his name to the sound commonly used by the average lemur for a wide variety of purposes, some of them even printable in a family newsgroup. ---------------- (9) Is "Frink" in any dictionary? made another step upwards toward respectability when 'frink', the Lemur verb of unknown meaning, was included in the latest release of the Jargon File. The Jargon File is the closest thing that the computer and USENET world have to an unabridged dictionary. You can ftp the Jargon File from lots of FTP sites. Email or ask on alt.folklore.computers to find the best place to snag it. Here's the definition, per Eric Raymond: :frink: /frink/ v. The unknown ur-verb, fill in your own meaning. Found esp. on the USENET newsgroup, where it is said that the lemurs know what `frink' means, but they aren't telling. Compare {gorets}. --------------- (10) Where can I find .GIFs of Lemurs? The following sites have lemur .GIFs in the following directories:, /graphics/gif/l, /mirrors/wustl/graphics/gif/l, /graphics/gif/l, /pub/images/animals The files are "lemur01" through "lemur11" -- .gif or .jpg. You can also find some lemur pics on the furry FTP site ( in /pub/furry/images/downloads/l. A master index is in file index-by-date in /pub/furry/misc. They ask for access only between 1800-0600 Central time. --------------- (11) Are there any drinks inspired by lemurs? Yes. Here are three. Try them at your own risk. From: Spike the Destroyer Subject: Screaming Lemur Recipe >Take one standard sized $8.99 bottle of reasonably cheap gin. We >use Popov. Purchase a package of Hawaiian Punch drink mix. The >traditional flavor of choice is "Sharkleberry Punch", but a >reasonable alternative is Rock Island Red or some other silly >name. Just as long as the hue of the drink is resembles the >intesine of a lemur. (light to medium pink) Mix the two together, >and ice heavily. > >That's it! If you proportion it correctly, it should be very >sweet with only a slight hint of gin aftertaste. You may dillute >with sugar or water if you really need to. From: Joel Furr ( Subject: Reeling Lemur Recipe >Ingredients: >3/4 glass of Big K Grape Soda >1/4 glass of "Aristocrat" vodka >Ice > >One or two of these will have the most well-balanced and upright >lemur staggering and reeling around the apartment. From: (Richard A. Schumacher) Subject: Recipe for "Sleepy Lemur" >1 oz. Kahlua >1 oz. creme de Cacao >1 oz. vodka >Balance skim milk and chipped ice > >Serve in a large truncated conical glass, or in a plastic rocket >ship with a straw. --------------- (12) How can I make my own Twinkies at home? Sylvia Sotomayor ( tells all: This is primarily (but not only) for our British readers, who are having difficulties getting twinkies (tm). I got this twinkie recipe from a book Top Secret Recipes, by Todd Wilbur, published by Plume. $10. ISBN 0-452-26995-4. I didn't get permission to share this or anything, but then I work for Plume, so they better not mind. Besides, this book has lots and lots of neat recipes in it, so it is worth buying anyway! Twinkie Recipe: You will need a spice bottle (approximately the size of a Twinkie), twelve 12 by 14 inch pieces of aluminum foil, a cake decorator or pastry bag, and a toothpick. Ingredients: for the Cake: nonstick spray, 4 egg whites, one 16 ounce box golden pound (or sponge, whatever) cake mix, and 2/3 cup water. for the Filling: 2 tablespoons butter, 1/3 cup vegetable shortening, 1 cup powdered sugar, 1/4 cup granulated sugar, 1/3 cup evaporated milk, 1 tea-spoon vnilla extract, and 2 drops lemon extract. Step 1: Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Step 2: Fold each piece of aluminum foil in half twice. Wrap the folded foil around the spice bottle to create a mold. Leae the top of the mold open for pouring in the batter. Make twelve of these molds and arrange them on a cookie sheet or in a shallow pan. Grease the inside of each mold with a light coating of nonstick spray. (According to the diagrams in the book, a Twinkie is approximately four inches long, 1 and 3/4 inches wide and about an inch or so tall.) Step 3: Disregard the instructions on the box of cake mix. Instead, beat the egg whites until stiff. Combine them with the cake mix and water, and beat until thoroughly blended (about 2 minutes). Step 4: Pour the batter into the molds, filling each one about 3/4 inch. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes, or until the cake is golden brown and a toothpick stuck in the center comes out clean. Step 5: For the filling, cream the butter and shortening. Slowly add the sugars while beating. Step 6: Add the evaporated milk, vanilla, and lemon extract. Step 7: Mix on medium speed ntil completely smooth and fluffy. Step 8: When the cakes are done and cooled, use a toothpick to make three small holes in the bottom of each one. Move the toothpick around the inside of each cake to create space for the filling. Step 9: Using a cake decorator or pastry bag, inject each cake with filling through all three holes. Makes 12. End of recipe. They, of course, forgot to add Step 10: Feed to thankful lemurs. Enjoy, Sylvia Try it! --------------- (13) Is Terry Chan in the FAQ? Yes. His address is Send him all the fan mail you want. --------------- (14) What's significant about Tob Wood? Tob Wood, aka, was toasted with a special birthday toast at AFU/AFL Southeast, held at Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina, on March 27, 1993. Basically, Tob couldn't attend, since he's all the way out in Omaha, Nebraska, but since his birthday fell on the 27th, he asked that we take brief note of it in passing during the event. A group of people, some of whom had even posted to at some point in their lifetime, took time out from their discussions of zeppelins and alternate histories to have a toast of Big K Grape Soda to Tob. --------------- (15) What _is_ Big K Grape Soda? Big K Grape Soda is a brand of soda sold by Kroger supermarkets. Kroger is a fairly wide-spread chain with offices in Cincinnati, Ohio and stores located in many U.S. states. Kroger has, as most supermarkets do, an essentially generic house brand of most everything. In the case of soda, the house brand is called "Big K." It usually sells for about 49 or 59 cents per 2 liter jug and isn't all that bad. Lemurs like it because of that great generic taste. --------------- (16) What was Southeast? Southeast was a get-together held on March 27, 1993 in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, including people from and alt.folklore.urban. Since it was the first such event held in the southeastern USA, the turnout was not massive, but attendance is expected to rise in future years. Attending on behalf of were Joel Furr and Vance Kochenderfer; attending on behalf of alt.folklore.urban were Bruce Tindall, Jim Cambias, and Diane Kelly. Also attending was Dena Barbee (a member of the great non-USENET world population) and three goats, one cat, and infinite numbers of lemurs. The featured attraction was a tour of the Duke University Primate Center, located in Durham. In addition to the tour, the participants had lunch at a dim sum restaurant, beer at a brewpub, and a relaxing evening of urban legend trading in Bruce Tindall's palatial mansion in Carpenter, North Carolina. --------------- (17) What was Southeast? It's a long story -- the newsgroup had been planning a big "boink" as they called it in Durham, North Carolina, during the June 18-19-20 weekend of 1993. Louise Perry, an reader who studies in England yet who was visiting her family in the USA, was also going to be in Durham for a DUPC visit as she had adopted a red-ruffed lemur named Diphda. Since there were all these people in the Durham area I knew vaguely, I went down too! When all was said and done, we had a group of some fifteen people going around the standard DUPC tour. We got to see some of the animals we'd adopted, but not up close and personal since the educational coordinator who would have arranged that was not on duty that day. Louise did get to meet Diphda and pose for photos, and I got to wow everyone with my encyclopedic knowledge of lemur trivia. We also got to see the new DUPC noctural animals facility, which was crammed with adorable little mouse lemurs and lorises and tarsiers. This time around, the people present were as follows. There were three readers there and three associated hangers-on; the three readers were Joel Furr, Louise Perry, and Timothy Satterfield (a Durham-area resident). Louise had brought along her boyfriend, Jim Parberry of Norfolk, England, and Tim had brought along two friends from the locality, Cheryl and Jared Murphy. We were accompanied into the Primate Center by someone who'd unexpectedly shown up as well: Dena Barbee, the friend of Bruce Tindall's who participated in AFL/AFU Southeast yet missed the lemur tour through unexpected circumstances. Dena was back to do the tour for the first time and coincidentally was there the same day as AFL/SS Southeast. Our contingent from consisted of Beth "Diamond" Abrams, Paul Wallich, Seth Breidbart, and Eleanor "Piglet" Evans. There were apparently dozens of other wandering around Durham that day that we only glimpsed lolling at a picnic table on the DUPC grounds as we were finishing our tour. --------------- (18) What was Lemurcon '94? Lemurcon '94 was the first big gathering, once again being held in Durham, North Carolina. Its success had a lot to do with the fact that, for the first time, someone from the newsgroup was actually IN DURHAM and there- fore could coordinate events with the Duke University Primate Center, set up a hotel, get the barbecue stuff, and so forth without having to do a lot of long distance calls. Lemurcon '94 took place on a scorcher of a day, Saturday, July 9, 1994. Quite a few of the out-of-towners had met the night before for dinner at Ole NC Barbecue in north Durham. The day's program consisted of a lengthy tour of the Primate Center guided by Scientific Director and internationally known paleontologist and primatologist, Dr. Elwyn Simons... including a lengthy foray to visit with the black and white ruffed lemurs and ringtailed lemurs in one of the large Natural Habitat Enclosures and a very up close and personal nuzzling by Canopus the black and white ruffed lemur, and a lecture on the history of the Prehistoric Sloth Lemur. The people who'd adopted lemurs were taken off into the depths of the woods to find their adopted animals while others went off to tour the Nocturnal Building, and Joel Furr and David Witzel singed all the hair off their hands cooking hamburgers. During lunch, the adopters returned and ate and then did the Nocturnal Building thang while others spent a lot of money in the DUPC gift shop. After 4 pm arrived, some people went home and others went to their hotel rooms to shower and change for dinner, which was held at the Olive Garden restaurant in south Durham. Memorable moments included: * Canopus nuzzling all of us, apparently out of affection but actually looking for food * Chiggers, chiggers, chiggers! * Finding the slimy thing in the box of Twinkies * Rollande Krandall playing her ocarina to a troop of ringtails while they mewed in time to the music * Joel Furr's look of absolute dejection when he didn't make it onto the evening news (Paula Filseth did instead) * Trying to explain "USENET" to a reporter from the Durham Herald-Sun, who, despite spending all day looking at Joel Furr's nametag, still managed to refer to him as "Jeff Furr" in the next day's paper. * Dr. Simons imitating the calls of prehistoric Sloth Lemurs in the crowded Fossil Lab * Explaining the concept of North Carolina barbecue to Tom Esch * Punch-drunk, exhausted, hysterical laughter at the Olive Garden * "Yeeeeeow" as David Witzel and Joel Furr burned themselves yet again * Learning first-hand about the precise aim and remarkable distance the average lemur can achieve with a stream of urine It was a long, exhausting day, but virtually everyone seemed to have a good time and clamored for Lemurcon '95 to be held next year. 'Con participants were: Paul and Paula Filseth (San Jose, CA), David and Kira Smith (Tampa, FL), Chris Brann (Atlanta, GA), Mary Ann Neel (Lafayette, IN), Vance Kochenderfer (Havre de Grace, MD), Dolly Paul and Rollande Krandall (Dearborn, MI), Joao de Souza and Maria Drago (New York City or thereabouts), John, Margret, and Liz Rylko (Tulsa, OK), Lisa Ruthig and Tom Esch (Landsdowne, PA), Dave Sisson and Todd Perry (Blacksburg, Virginia), and a whole slew of North Carolinians: KG Anderson, Richard Barnette, Lara Benton, Amy Conklin, Beth Davis, Joel Furr, Judy Gehrig, Steve Gehrig, Judah Greenblatt, Brian Little, Andrea Raddock, Lorrie Tomek, Alyson Wilson, Greg Wilson, David Witzel, and Doreen Yen. --------------- (19) Got any nifty factoids about lemurs to wrap things up with? Sure. We can't tell you everything there is to tell about lemurs because there's so much to know, but the books listed earlier will help you get started. To wrap up the FAQ, here're a few factoids about some lemur species that you might like to amaze your friends with. (Thanks, Bill, for your contributions.) Ringtailed lemurs: Ringtails have black and white circles around their tails, and a black masklike area on its face around their eyes. Ringtails are often very friendly, but also very acquisitive. Don't leave your car keys lying around where this lemur can find them. If you have laserdiscs of Japanese cartoons, the lemur will be your friend for life. Grey gentle bamboo lemurs: These lemurs are small, soft, friendly-looking, and not at all menacing in appearance. But wait: grey gentle bamboo lemurs are actually known for their temper. If you meet a lemur, and the lemur sneaks up behind you and takes a swipe at you with well sharpened fingernails, odds are you've spotted a Gentle Lemur; Gentle Lemurs have been seething for generations over being stuck with such a silly designation and are out to prove that they are anything but gentle. If the lemur does not attack, but instead sits down and chews on a nice clump of cyanide-laden bamboo leaves, you're seeing another interesting quality of the bamboo lemurs: bamboo lemurs can ingest cyanide in quantities that would kill primates several times their size. When British conservationist Gerald Durrell was in Madagascar collecting specimens for breeding, he kept a well-fed and well-cared-for collection in an adjacent hotel room, and noticed that among their repertoire was a popping sound not at all unlike the sound of a champagne bottle being uncorked. A roomful of these creatures, of course, would sound like a cocktail party. Sifakas: Sifakas are white of fur, with extremely long arms and legs and with black faces. Sifakas are among the largest of lemurs. Sifakas (pronounced Shi-fahks or Shi-falks) are a variety of lemur that has proved to be exceptionally hard to keep in captivity due to their preference for heart- shaped beds and Magic Fingers boxes instead of green-walled enclosures with a few pipes projecting out for them to climb on. Consequently, they've become very skilled at outwitting their human captors, picking locks (I'm NOT making this up) and devising ways to get extra food despite the presence of electric shocks around the food trays. Aye-ayes: Aye-ayes are small and rodent-like, with a long, skinny middle finger ending in a hooklike nail? Aye-ayes are especially feared by the Malagasy natives because of a local superstition that aye-ayes can curse people to gruesome deaths simply by pointing their long middle fingers at you. Aye-ayes are generally killed on sight by the natives. Efforts to breed them in captivity are paying off bit by bit, as the first aye-aye born in captivitity was born last year at the Duke University Primate Center: Blue Devil. Aye-ayes live off insects, which they dig out of rotten wood with their long hook-tipped middle fingers. When they were first discovered, they were thought to be rodents, and it was not until much later that they were identified as primates. Black lemurs: Interestingly, black lemurs have brilliantly blue eyes, and are in fact the only primate species other than man that has blue eyes. The females are golden-furred and the males are black-furred. This difference in color between the sexes is known as "sexual dimorphism." Partly because blue-eyed lemurs look so glamorous, the Duke University Primate Center names them all after movie stars such as Judy Garland and Robert Redford. Dwarf lemurs (Cheirogaleidae): These are the small, sneaky, steal your twinkies before you notice them lemurs. They are mostly a rather nondescript brown (all the better for you not to see them) except for the fork-tailed (forked?) lemur (furcifer) which has a striking black fork shaped mark running from the base of it's tail to its head. Some of them (the fat-tailed lemurs) have (you guessed it) fat tails. This is where they store their twinkies in the off season. Probably the cutest (and certainly the smallest) is the mouse lemur. These are prime espionage agents, weighing in at approx 60g - mouse size. Just imagine a mouse that can leap 2 metres, and has little grasping hands, and tickles like crazy when running around inside your T-shirt. There's much more to know about lemurs, and is the place to start. Welcome aboard! ------------------------------------------------------------------ Revised April 5, 1993 by Joel Furr, Revised July 6, 1993, by Joel Furr, Revised August 8, 1994, by Joel Furr,