Let’s Dress Up in Fur and Tails for the Lemur Ball

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. And Grant, I have learned a new term, and I wonder if you know it. The term is lemur ball.

Lemur ball? Like fancy gowns and tie and tails and swinging the cane and I don’t know, being announced at the door by a footman?

That’s exactly what I was picturing. But actually, well, let me share from this book that I want to talk about. There’s a description of a lemur ball in here.

When ring-tailed lemurs are cold or frightened, or when they want to bond, they group together in a furry mass known as a lemur ball, forming a black and white sphere that ranges in size from a football to a bicycle wheel. They intertwine their tails and paws and press against one another’s walnut-sized, swiftly beating hearts.

Isn’t that beautiful?

Yeah, it’s a cuddle puddle. It’s a puppy pile.

It is, and you can find pictures of lemur balls if you just search for that on the Internet.

Oh, boy. A new life goal.

Right? A new thing to do when you need cheering up. They’re really, really cute.

Where did you learn about this, Martha?

I’m glad you asked, Grant. I learned about it in a new book called Vanishing Treasures, a Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures. It’s by Catherine Rundle. And you may recall that Rundle is a fellow at Oxford University, and we’ve talked before about her other book, Super Infinite, which is about the life of the poet John Donne. And that book emphasizes Dunn’s imperative to realize that life itself is an astonishment, and it behooves us to be amazed.

And in this new book, she takes that idea even further in 23 short essays, each about a particular animal and what’s so astonishing about that animal. And then she assembles them into a kind of cabinet of curiosities. She calls attention to remarkable facts about raccoons, pangolins, hedgehogs, wombats, and narwhals, to name just a few. And she marvels at the Greenland shark, which I didn’t realize lives for hundreds of years. And she celebrates what she calls the off-kilter beauty of some animals, like the hermit crab that has shocking emerald eyes on stalks that are striped like a barber’s pole in red and white.

So this is a beautiful little book, and it has poetic passages like that and tasteful illustrations. But there’s also an undercurrent of sadness and urgency, because all of these species or their subspecies are endangered. So this book is not just a lyrical invitation to wonder the beauty and complexity of the living world. It’s also an urgent call to recognize its fragility.

And I just really appreciated it.

And the book again?

Vanishing Treasures, a Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures.

And it’s by Katherine Rundle.

We’ll have Katherine Rundle’s book on our website so you can find out more about it.

And you can find out more about the show and how to talk to us on our website at waywordradio.org or call right now, toll-free in the United States and Canada, 1-877-929-9673 or email words at whitewardradio.org.