July 4th in the Jungle

Well, I thought it was about time for me to quit being lazy and make some sort of a contribution to our little blog—Rachel here! Checking in after a rainy, muggy 4^th of July spent here at the sanctuary. As it turns out, the sloths still want to be fed and cared for, even on rainy days, and EVEN on American holidays, so it was business as usual here in Limon.

It seems that no two days here are ever alike, and today was no exception. Our morning routine was thrown a bit off track due to the fact that our shipment of barro leaves (i.e. 2-toed sloth breakfast) did not arrive on Tuesday afternoon as scheduled. You see, sorting the barros is actually quite an undertaking; each and every stem must be carefully examined, buds and flowers must be removed, and every leaf must be checked for poisonous snails and slugs. It generally takes 8 of us about 45 minutes in total to go through all of the leaves. Since it’s such an undertaking, we generally do the sorting in the afternoon, so the sloths’ breakfast is ready to go in the morning. Since the shipment didn’t come in time on Tuesday, we had to sort the leaves Wednesday morning in addition to the rest of our morning routine. This probably threw everything off by about an hour, and in case you were wondering whether the sloths noticed that their breakfast was late…well, THEY NOTICED! By the time I made it over to my section to pass out breakfast, every single sloth was impatiently awaiting my arrival, clinging to the chain-link doors to their enclosures, staring at me, reaching/grabbing, and generally making it very difficult to actually enter the cages. Yes, believe it or not, we have to make sure that the sloths are backed away from the door before entering their enclosures. They actually CAN move fairly quickly if they really want to, and I have heard more than one story about escapees (although most all of these stories end with the missing sloth being recovered a few feet away from the building, but I digress…).

I suppose this would be a good time to share some information about “my” sloths, whom I am already growing completely and ridiculously attached to. I am currently caring for 15 sloths total, all adults of the 2-toed variety.    [Should I back up for a moment? There are two varieties of sloths living here at the sanctuary: 2-toed sloths (choloepus), and 3-toed sloths (bradypus). They actually look quite different from one another. The 2-toed variety have shiny, pink noses that protrude from the face, almost like a small snout. They have soft, shaggy fur, and tend to be blonde to light brown in color. The 3-toed variety have a raccoon-like mask on their faces, and a small black nose. They have a “smiley” appearance! They have coarse, wiry hair, and tend to be shades of grey, brown, and black.]      My brood, in no particular order, consists of: Franky, Priscilla, Joy, Miss Vicki, Spencer, Little Harry, Mocha, Luna, Pandora, Tory, Sheela, Santie, Bruno, Casper, and Camilla. 11 females and 4 males. I have been here for such a short time, and I have already picked up on how drastically different all of their little personalities are…it’s pretty amazing. Franky and Priscilla, for example, who live together, are mellow, sleepy girls who don’t move about their enclosure much. Joy, on the other hand, is a fire cracker, and a real trouble maker. She is constantly in motion, and she tries to reach through the chain link walls of the enclosure to grab passersby with her claw. Since I have been here, she has: shredded her daily care checklist (located on a clipboard hanging OUTSIDE her cage), knocked down one of the large wooden beams mounted in her cage for hanging, and managed to receive a nasty bite on her front paw by sticking it in a disapproving neighbor’s cage. She is also a bit “bitey”, as they affectionately refer to naughty sloths here at the sanctuary. Luna is a skinny little thing who might secretly be my favorite sloth in my section (don’t tell the others, please!). Whenever she sees me coming, she hangs from the door of her enclosure and reaches for me with her little sloth fingers. Her behavior is very puppy-like. Then there is Camilla, who gives the best little sloth kisses…yes, sloths give kisses; they lick your palm with their little tongues, and it’s actually quite sweet. I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. They are very much individuals, and I love every last one of ‘em. 

My little trouble maker, Joy, reaching for my hand. Don't be fooled, this isn't a sweet or loving gesture; she is trying to grab me so that she can bite me! Naughty!

My silly girl Luna, chewing on a water bottle.

Now that I have rambled on, back to our day. After we were done disappointing our slothy crew with their tardy breakfast, it was on to…BABY TIME!!! This has certainly been one of the high points of our days. Paul took out Toby today, for the second day in the row. Toby is a 2-toed guy who is a bit resistant to climbing. He would prefer to cling to your shirt and go for a walk in the jungle, which he is allowed to do after he has put in some quality time on the jungle gym. Paul was able to “bribe” Toby to finish his jungle gym time today by luring him with hibiscus flowers, which are apparently the equivalent of sloth chocolate. I must say, poor Toby, it is a difficult task to maintain any sense of masculinity when you are chowing down on hot pink flowers. MY baby time was amazingly incredible on this day. I took out a baby I had not previously met:  baby Matty. In summary, I still can’t believe he is real. He is a 3-toed baby (around 1 year- babies cling to mom until around this time) , and he is the tiniest little sloth (save for the tiny newborns) in the entire sanctuary. I think Paul said it best when he described Matty as a “fuzzy starfish”. Matty has a tiny little face, positioned atop a giant Buddha belly, with little triangular arms and legs sticking out in every direction. You could literally hold him in the palm of one hand. I do not know how it would be possible to look at him without smiling. Matty was very tentative about climbing on the jungle gym, which is certainly understandable since his tiny claws are barely large enough to grip its branches. All I can say about Matty is that I am still trying to decide whether I can convince customs that he is a small kitten so that I can smuggle him back home with us…I kid, I kid! 

Paul with Toby

Toby, looking masculine beneath his blanket of hibiscus petals

Little Matty and I

Wee baby Matty

At the conclusion of baby time, the sanctuary staff invited us to follow a group of tourists on one of the regularly scheduled sanctuary tours, so that we could hear the information typically presented to visitors. The tour started out with a short video projected on a large screen in the open-air education building; unfortunately, about ten minutes into the video, the skies opened up and it began POURING. The education building happens to have a tin roof, and as you might imagine, the rain was deafening. The tour guide turned the volume all the way up on the video, but it was still impossible to hear. The rain just kept coming, with no signs of letting up. The tour guide did her best to share some information with the tourists, SCREAMING to be heard above the rain, but it was still a major challenge. We followed the tour across the hall to see the adult sloths “on exhibition”, and then, once the rain let up, the tour marched on to the nursery. About that time, we had to cut our tour short to go prep sloth lunches. Such is life at the sanctuary!

As luck would have it, the rain had moved out by mid-afternoon, so the sanctuary staff announced that we would be having a cookout for the 4^th of July! The owner of the sanctuary is American, and she actually has several family members here visiting at the moment. The sanctuary staff prepared us a very nice spread…hotdogs, potato salad, pasta salad, brownies, etc. Very American and a very appreciated touch after days of rice and beans! We sat on the dock by the water, watching a troop of monkeys swing wildly from tree to tree across the river as we stuffed our faces. After dinner, the staff put out supplies to make s’mores…a fun and tasty treat, except for the fact that the only readily available marshmallows in the area turned out to be pastel colored and fruit flavored, which was interesting, both visually and flavor-wise. We were especially entertained by how excited one of our new Aussie friends was to try a real American “schmore”,  as she called it. 

Costa Rican s'mores...innntterrresssttingggg.

Tomorrow we have our first day off from work here at the sanctuary, and we plan on attempting to take the bus into the town of Puerto Viejo. It should be an interesting experience, and we will report back once it’s said and done. Happy 4^th of July, America!

-Rachel