The Sloth Hanging in the Tree

Listen to the audio here: https://venture-within.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/The-Sloth.m4a

Yesterday, my neighbor spotted a sloth in her tree.

Bicycling down the dusty dirt road through the intense Nicaraguan heat, I met her in her front yard. Standing under the shallow forest of tall, leafy trees, we gazed up into the sunshiney canopy and were in awe.

High, high above us hugging a thick branch, its shaggy hair drooping moss-like, a sleepy sloth pouched himself amongst the cluster of leafy branches and snoozed.

I have never seen a sloth in Nicaragua. Hints and rumors of them surface from time to time, but most of my sightings of this dozy elusive creature have been in Costa Rica. There, they lope their strangely long arms through the trees, their fuzzy, cheerful faces smiling down on humans as we point up and zoom in, attempting to catch even the slightest movement with our phones. Sloths are a fairly common sight in Costa Rica, but here, they are rarely seen.

Someone once told me that when we see animals in the wild, it means we are on the same frequency as they are. Which makes sense, I suppose. We can only hear certain music if we are tuned to the same channel from which the tunes are playing. Why wouldn’t the case be the same for animals? Think of all the channels, all the…