Monday, October 23, 2006

Part Toe-Faif

Today a friend asked me: ‘What the hell is a phantomape anyway?’ Good question.
I’ll try to answer it.

You see, it’s not really an ape. It is in fact a simple tarsier, but phantomlike. If you are wondering what a tarsier is, I’ll go into my serious mode.

Tarsiers are members of the Tarsius genus of prosimian primates, monotypic in the Tarsiidae family and Tarsiiformes infraorder. The entire infraorder was previously classified in the Strepsirhini suborder, but now classified in the Haplorrhini suborder, although they are not considered to be monkeys. Tarsiers have enormous eyes and long feet. Their feet have extremely elongated tarsus bones, which is how they got their name, and most are nocturnal. They are primarily insectivorous, and catch insects by jumping at them. They are also known to prey on birds and snakes. Gestation takes about six months, and tarsiers give birth to single offspring. Once found in Asia, Europe and North America, tarsiers are now only found on several Southeast Asian islands including the Philippines, Sulawesi, Borneo, and Sumatra. When caged, some tarsiers have been known to injure and even kill themselves because of the stress.

– end of serious mode-

The phantomy part is quite easy to explain. You see, when a stressed-out tarsier dies, good old whatever’s-up-there doesn’t let him reincarnate his little furry self, but assigns him to a mentally unstable troubled young soul who could use a ghostlike bug-eating friend to guide him through life. If he does his job, he will become a foxy stewardess with large hooters in his next life.

How I ended up with one, is still a mystery.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A foxy stewardess with large hooters? So not what I was expecting!

James Kernan Ferrin said...

serious mode: easy to follow. not so much.

but, at least you are cute.