1.7 done Mouse lemurs, opposable thumbs, neorats

Squik was your classic big buck on campus studding at 2.5 weeks old. Getting laid several times a day is every young neorat's dream, he was living the life. But at 3 weeks of age, he wanted to do more with his life.

Some say he was a sexual deviant, but then, he was also the father of the opposable thumb. Mouse lemurs, strepsirrhine primates, were small enough for him to mount, only come into heat once a year and for a few hours at that. Squik had the advanced neorat sense of smell, on par with a dog. He could smell the bitch before she went into heat and be right their, ricky rat on the spot. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am. Mark Twain said, “They did not know it was impossible so they did it”. Of course different species can't produce living offspring. And to be sure, several were stillborn, others failed to thrive. But there in Madagascar, cradle of so many diverse plants and animals, life found a way.

Lemrat son of Squik, distant prodigy of the first neorat, was not welcome in the burrow or the conference. He was different, very much so, the first rat with opposable thumbs, equally at home upright as on all fours. Squik was with him at first, encouraging, teaching the way of the forest and as many symbols as possible, and then gone, rats live and die fast. Instead of weeks, Lemrat would live 15 years. Alone he made his way through the jungle, invisible, silent, until that day he heard him.

Humph had been right all those generations ago, Charles Vanderbilt was a dreamer. Their minds connected across the jungle.

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Jograt, son of Lemrat, was the first tool builder. He found a box of nails in the boat shop labeled 16d. One went into the hottest part of a human cooking fire for cooking mofo gasy. When the head was red hot, he wrapped torn rags around the cooler end and pounded the head into the side of the iron oven. After 2 days, he had his mallet, or, hammer. Then he began to shape a second nail into a weapon, a