Blake has exciting news to share with us about his legendary day that developed on Friday.

“It started with me participating in a race starting at Gabion and going to Kianjavato. I finished second (out of 6 participants) which was great and then got a hearty welcome once I arrived in Kianjavato by all the Malagasy there. After this, I went to work out in the field which was the typical fare of behavioural studies plus I saw the most beautiful walking stick I have ever seen in my life; it was literally the color of a rainbow and covered in spikes and had black wings with a purple dot on them. The walking stick crawled all over my face for about 10 minutes then flew off.  After work, I walked home and received several hearty congratulations from people along my journey back to KAFS. Upon reaching KAFS, I worked on data then prepared an English lesson for some of the MBP employees who arrived around 4pm for class. About halfway through the lesson, a man walked up and there were some rapid exchanges in Malagasy between him and our guides. It turns out he had picked up a P. Simus that had fallen off of its mother in Ambodibonary. Sierra and I immediately had to stop our lessons and rushed to attempt to find the lemurs before they moved away. We flagged down the sprinter and made it to the lychee trees and placed the baby in the tree. At this point in time, a large group of townspeople had gathered around us and we had to move them back to give the mother a chance to reunite with the baby. The mother came down and grabbed the baby and placed the distressed infant on her.  At this point, we were able to see that she actually had twins!  We (Sierra and I) imagine this might have been the cause for the loss in the first place. Overall, this definitely felt like a paramount moment in our burgeoning careers in wildlife conservation.  Upon returning to KAFS, we sat down for dinner and a massive rain started and torrential amounts of water poured from the skies.  It eventually subsided and we were able to go to our tents and settle in for the night.”

Blake, thank you for your fun story, and congratulations on your race!

The picture above was taken by one of MBP’s very first simus volunteer, Mary, about four years ago. That was the first time we had ever encountered twins, until now!