Unrelated to Baseball

As I was walking home from Fenway Park on May 20, 2008, about 10:40 PM, near the intersection of Beacon and Mountfort Streets, near Audobon Circle, I saw a lemur.   Now, let me hasten to add two “I am well aware” points:

1)  I am very well aware that there are no Lemurs living wild in Boston, or, for that matter, the Western Hemisphere or the Northern Hemisphere, and

2)  I am very well aware that when you see things that are not generally believed to exist, people think you’re crazy.

Nonetheless, I know what I saw, I am certain of what I saw, and people have thought I was crazy for a long time, so I’m used to that.   I am not in any way joking, pulling your leg, using a lemur as a metaphor, or anything of the sort.   I am simply making a public report of what I saw, because it seems to me that I should do this. 

I was on an empty street with no other person in sight.  When I first saw the animal I was 30 to 40 feet from it, and I at first took it to be a cat.   The animal’s head was a speckled gray in color, light gray with small white lines mixed in.  It walked on all fours, was similar in size to a cat, and had a long tail. 

            There was something in its path, however—just a stick or something—and as the animal moved over this obstruction it was apparent from its manner of movement that it was not a cat.    Rather than jumping or hopping over the stick as a cat would do, it lifted itself over the obstruction.   I believe, although I am not certain of this, that the animal may have planted its tail as a foundation, and lifted its hind legs over the stick while its tail was on the ground.  I do not know whether lemur do this, and, as I say, I’m uncertain on that point.

            In any case I froze at that moment, and the animal continued to walk toward me, unaware that I was there.  The animal walked slowly directly toward me until he was perhaps six to eight feet away.    When the animal stepped onto the sidewalk he spotted me, and then hurried forward, right in front of me, perhaps four to six feet from me, across the wide sidewalk, taking shelter under a parked car.   The duration of the observation was 20 to 25 seconds, and it is a well-lit area under street lights, in addition to which it was a cloudless night one night after a full moon.   I had a very clear view of the animal, at close range, for a length of time which is probably six or seven times as long as the period that a fly ball is in the air, and I was very intently focused on the animal throughout that period. 

            As the animal was walking toward me, I asked myself, “What in the world is that?”, and began running through possibilities in my mind.   A raccoon?  No.  A possum?  No.  Some kind of dog that I don’t know, perhaps with a serious case of mange that has taken some of its hair off and left it unrecognizable?   What could it be?  

            The animal moved with an odd sashaying motion, moving not only its head but the front half of its body slightly left and right as it came forward.   This suggested to me for an instant the possibility that the animal could be rabid, which of course alarmed me and made my focus on the animal more intense, but the animal gave no real indication of being rabid.

            When the animal turned and walked across the sidewalk in front of me, that’s when my jaw really dropped open and I saw clearly that it could not have been a possum, a raccoon, a rat, or any other animal that one might expect to encounter wild in Massachusetts.  It had large, dark eyes that sat relatively flat in the side of its head, very much like a possum’s eyes.   But it had very long legs, holding its body higher up in the air than a cat.   A possum nearly drags its body along the ground. . .the possums we have back home in Kansas do.   I gather there is a different type of possum here that holds its body 3-4 inches off the ground, but this animal’s body may have been eight inches off the ground.  Its body was higher than its head, and there was exceptional “clearance” under the animal.   The clearance under the animal was much greater than the width of the animal’s torso.  

            The animal, as it passed in front of me, carried its tail straight behind it, absolutely straight like a broom handle, with the height of the tail at its end being apparently exactly the same as the height at the point of connection to its body.  I’ve never seen any other animal carry its tail like that.  Its tail was dark gray, similar in size to a cat’s tail except a little longer, and somewhat darker than the rest of the animal’s body, and absolutely uniform in color, with no rings, lines, speckles or other variation, whereas the rest of the animal’s body was a speckled or mottled gray.  

            The animal’s body arched slightly downward on the back half, and its tail—although carried flat and carried parallel to the ground at a height of perhaps ten to sixteen inches—its tail grew out of the arching line of its back in a continuous line, very different from the way a cat’s tail is hinged to its body, or a dog’s or a squirrel’s or a possums, similar to the way a monkey’s tail hangs on its body.   His tail was thick, appeared to be strong, and was as long as the rest of his body.   My distinct impression was that it was a prehensile tail, although I didn’t see anything that really confirmed this. 

            The most remarkable thing about the animal, however, was its manner of walking.   Its front legs did not grow out of its underside, as a dog’s would, or a cat’s, or any other animal native to North America.  Rather, its front legs came out of the side of its body, more toward the top than toward the bottom.  They were more arms than they were legs—arms on which he was walking, but still arms.  The animal moved forward not by striding forward but by lifting its “arms”, pivoting slightly, and “swinging” its arm/leg forward six or eight inches, then rapidly pivoting the other way to do the same from the other side.  

            The animal walked on its wrists. . .the front legs.  The back legs were planted normally, but the front legs, as it swung them forward it kept them turned it, like a primate, and put its weight on the back of its hands or its wrists.  

            The animal was very graceful, but the manner in which it moved was very awkwardly designed.   Although the animal was clearly alarmed when it saw me and was hurrying to get out of my sight, it did not run.   It walked faster; it quickened its walk, but it did not run.   A cat, a squirrel, a rat, probably a dog. . .any of those animals, in the same situation, would have broken into a series of long leaps, repeatedly getting all four paws in the air, then leaping again.  A possum, alarmed, scoots along the ground.  A raccoon has relatively short legs but can pivot them very, very rapidly, and can run very fast by whirling those short little legs.   This animal, I believe, had three feet on the ground at every moment.  He was hurrying—switching feet as fast as he could—but it wasn’t all that fast.  It was much, much slower than almost any domestic animal would have been in the same situation. 

            It was my impression that the animal lacked the ability to run while on the ground. 

            As the animal moved in front of me across the sidewalk, I was able to observe two other things.   First, as it strode forward it exposed its abdomen near its flank in a way that is different from any other animal that I have ever observed in the wild.   Second, you know how a greyhound dog or a boxer or some other breeds of dog, the upper torso (around the rib cage) is much larger than the lower torso (the abdomen)?  That was true of this animal as well. . .the upper torso was at least twice the circumference of the lower torso, and I would guess more than that—very different from a cat, whose torso is essentially barrel-shaped.   

The animal’s hair was short, like that of a rat or some breeds of dog, rather than stringy like a possum’s. 

The animal had some dark fur near its eyes—a kind of a mask—and a sort of a pug-like face. 

I failed to notice the animal’s ears, and I was unable to see his feet. 

It’s eyes did not “glow” or reflect light the way a cat’s eyes or many other animals eyes will at night. 

The animal made no noise of any kind—no bark, meow, growl, hiss, roar, humm, chatter. . . .nothing. 

The animal made no effort, in the time I was observing it, to raise up off its front feet.

I did not observe anything that would tell me whether the animal was male or female.

The animal was obviously an adult, and appeared to be in good health, alert, and fully oriented to its surroundings.  I saw no indication of advanced age, disease, feebleness or injury, no marks or scars.  My impression was that the animal was in a place that it was very familiar with, doing things that were normal activities for it, probably foraging for food.   While the animal was very surprised and a little alarmed to see me, my impression was that this was not the first time that it had seen a human, and that it was not overly concerned by the encounter.

When the animal went underneath the parked car for refuge I walked off to a safe distance, got down on the ground and tried to see under the car to see if I could see anything more.   I was unable to see anything under the car, however, and my impression was that the animal had moved from underneath that car to another one or perhaps crawled up into the wheel well or something to avoid being seen.

I continued walking, and continued flipping through images in my mind, trying to figure out what in the world I had just seen.  Sloth?  Bear?  Porcupine?  Beaver?  Within a few seconds I hit upon the idea of “Lemur”, and “Lemur” was the first thing that I could not eliminate.  As soon as I got home I got on the internet and looked up pictures of Lemurs, and essentially confirmed, to my own satisfaction, that the animal was a Lemur.  

I told people, over the next few days, that I had seen a Lemur on the streets of Boston, and a friend of mine (Jared Porter) was able to find a link to a news story about a Lemur sighting 20 miles from here in March, 2002; actually, not a Lemur but a “strange, Lemur-like dog”.   The man who reported that sighting, Andrew Mudge, says that he “has a degree in anthropology and studied lemurs in college.”  However, in my opinion, the animal that I saw was not a “Lemur-like dog”; it was a Lemur. 

What I mean by that is this.  I am not a wildlife expert, and I’m not native to this region, and I certainly could be mistaken in my identification of an animal.  What I am saying is that in my observation this animal had every characteristic consistent with it being a lemur, and no characteristic inconsistent with it being a lemur.    I have lived in Kansas for almost all of my life, and I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of raccoons in the wild.   This animal had no characteristic consistent with it being a raccoon, except that it did have some black fur around its eyes. . .not the rectangular black mask of a raccoon, but something of a mask.   Other than that. . .nothing in common with a raccoon.

It did have some very general characteristics in common with a cat—size, coloration, length and shape of tail—but its eyes, torso, the construction of its legs and manner of walking obviously rule out the possibility of it being any member of the cat family.

I tried to think through the possibility that this could be some sort of rare cross-breed. . .occasionally polar bears and black bears will mate in the wild, or wolves will mate with domestic dogs on occasion, and I also tried to think through whether it could be a more common animal that was disfigured by some sort of disease.   I was unable to come up with anything that didn’t seem more remote and improbable than a lemur somehow escaping from somebody’s care and living wild in Boston.  

One of the descriptions of a Lemur that I found online was that a Lemur looks like a cross between a monkey and a possum.  That’s an excellent description of what I saw—a cross between a monkey and a possum.  The animal did have large, flat, possum-like eyes, but possums are marsupials.   There are very few other marsupials in North America, and it would seem to be immensely unlikely that a possum could cross-breed with some other animal.  

There are many species of Lemur, and, despite repeated trips to the internet, I have been unable to identify this specific species.   It looks something like a Sifaka, but a Sifaka has a white tail, while this animal’s tail was dark gray, and the Sifaka in general has much more pronounced coloration patterns than this animal did.  It seems to fit the description of an Indri (or Babakoto), in that the Indri is larger than most Lemur and gray in color, but the Indri has a short tail, whereas the tail of this animal was quite long. 

I reported the animal to the Boston Animal Control office, but they said they had not received any reports of Lemur sightings in Boston. 

Speculation

            Having been fairly obsessed with this event for a couple of weeks now, perhaps you will permit me to speculate a little bit about the animal. 

            First, it seems obvious that the animal is nocturnal, based on the facts that

            1)  It has very large, dark eyes, like a possum’s eyes,

            2)  It has gray camouflage coloring, making it more difficult to see at night,

            3)  It was seen at night, and

            4)  It has not been reported by anyone else, which surely it would have been were it in the habit of wandering the streets of Boston in the daytime.

            Second, as to why the animal failed to see me earlier. .. . this also seems obvious.  I froze when I saw him.  I was a sentry dog handler in the Army many years ago, I was trained to freeze when I saw an aggressive dog off-leash, and I instinctively froze when I saw this animal.   The animal’s sight is probably based mostly on movement.  Also, he was walking directly toward me, and his eyes set relatively flat on the side of his head, suggesting that his vision is mostly to his sides.   Also, the sidewalk was slanting downward, so that when I first saw him I was probably 2 or 3 feet above the animal’s height.   Combining these factors, it is not surprising that he failed to see me until he was just a few feet from me. 

            The other obvious questions include:

            1)  Where does this animal live?,

            2)  Is it a solitary animal that has escaped from captivity, or is there a small population of such creatures?

            3)  Why hasn’t anyone else, other than me and Mr. Mudge, reported seeing it? 

            On the first question—where does the animal live—it seems likely that the animal normally lives in a tree, based on the very awkward manner of walking while on the ground, which would make the animal vulnerable to predators.   It is possible that this animal has taken to living in Boston because there are few predators in Boston—no wildcats or bears or coyotes or even big dogs living around here.   If you get outside Boston—certainly if you get 50 miles outside Boston—you’ll start running into those things.

            Across the street from where the animal was seen there is a row of mature trees, lining the train tracks.   The animal could have been heading for those.  Also, the animal was seen in the parking lot outside several three- to five-story buildings, which the animal could have adapted to as if a tree.

            Also, the location of the sighting was perhaps 1,000 to 1,500 feet from the Hall’s Pond Animal Sanctuary—a small area of just a few acres, but many hundreds of trees.  The animal could be living there.

            I have no idea, of course, whether this animal has a nest or whether it is nomadic.  However, as I said, it was my clear impression that the animal was in familiar territory.   I think that he knew where he was, or she was.   I believe that if you set up a nocturnal observation camera at that location, you probably would wind up with footage of this animal, probably within a few days.   That’s just a guess, but. . that’s my guess. 

            As to why no one else has reported seeing this animal, my explanation would be this.   Obviously the animal doesn’t make it a habit to show himself.  It happened that

            1)  I got a very clear look at the animal, and

            2)  I am a 58-year-old man who has seen hundreds and hundreds of raccoons and skunks and possums and what have you in the wild. 

            But most of the people who live in this area are younger people, and most of them are city people who probably have not very often seen possums or raccoons in the wild.   They see something weird, they think “What was that?”, and they decide it must have been a possum or a raccoon or something.  

            And also, you know, it’s not a normal or habitual thing to report wildlife sightings—when was the last time you reported one, after all?—and people may be averse to reporting things that are generally believed not to exist.

            Adding those things together, it is perhaps understandable that there have not been prior sightings of this animal, except perhaps Mr. Mudge.    But. . .I know what I saw, and I am confident that I will be proven right by future observation.   Somebody is going to catch this thing on video or something.   There is a lemur living wild on the streets of Boston, and if I have to be the first person to say so, well. .that’s just the way it is.