Madagascar

Rustling With Bug-eyed Lemurs, Shy Geckos, Giant Moths, and Other Freaks of Nature, This Island in the Indian Ocean Will Give Up Its Secrets if You’re Willing to Be Very, Very Patient.

- Sophy Roberts

I. “you’re looking in the wrong place,” Claret whispers. 

Our guide—a young local, or Malagasy, and a skilled naturalist—has stopped under a copse of Aramy fruit trees in the forest of Nosy Mangabe, part of an archipelago off Madagascar’s northeast coast. Beneath the dark canopy, vines corkscrew around bulbous trunks and palms burst up like giant shuttlecocks from the dense foliage underfoot. With every step, I sense an invisible audience of animals listening, though our presence is drowned out by the incessant scratching of cicadas and patter of light rain. 

“Higher. Can you see it?” he says, pointing past me. “It’s looking straight at you.” I’m more mesmerized than scared. In Madagascar, unlike other African countries I’ve visited, I’m not prey. There are no lions or buffalo to kill me, not even venomous snakes. But there are spectacular freaks—a giant moth with a tongue as long as a table fork, a mouse lemur so small it can fit inside a teacup. It’s why I’m here: to explore the pristine pockets that make this exotic island worth all the difficult indirect flights. Nosy Mangabe is a special reserve next to Masoala National Park, or “the eye of the forest.” The area is a honeypot of unique species and home to the endangered aye-aye, a bug-eyed lemur once thought to occupy an evolutionary niche between a squirrel and a woodpecker. The Malagasy believe that seeing an aye-aye in broad daylight is unlucky; others say that if an aye-aye points its bony finger at you, you’re marked for death. None of which has kept them from being poached.