Prior to the improbable encounter I’m about to describe, the only time my family and I had seen a sloth was long-distance through a telescope at The Sloth Watching Trail in La Fortuna. It took 13+ years of living in Costa Rica full-time for us to see a sloth up close and personal, and we couldn’t believe our eyes. This amazing creature appeared to be hitchhiking while ambling slow and low up Highway 1. The sloth was out of its element and dangerously close to wandering into the traffic that consistently barrels down the “autopista”. We parked at the gas station across the highway from the sloth’s location and ran over to keep it from getting into any serious trouble.
The poor buddy was wide-eyed and clearly stressed out. Several truckers stopped on the shoulder of the highway to check out the scene and offer advice as to how to handle the situation. Some folks took a few quick photos and left, while others stuck around and were actively involved in keeping the sloth safe and finding a solution. A trucker suggested that we call 911, so we did. After explaining to the dispatcher that we were calling for a sloth and that an ambulance wouldn’t be necessary to transport it wherever it needed to go (LOL, besides the fact that it’s a sloth, the poor thing didn’t appear to be hurt…just disoriented and possibly weak from hunger), the understanding was that local firemen would be coming to take care of it when they became available.
We waited a long while and the magical furball kept meandering back towards the highway, so one of the truckers who hung around grabbed some gloves from his truck and attempted to pick the sloth up to move him farther away from the road. Sloths are deceptively fast when they feel threatened, and our Tico friend almost got bitten. This is the same guy who suggested that we could probably just put the sloth in the trunk of our Honda, quite easily mind you, and relocate him or her ourselves in the jungles at the bottom of Calle Magallanes. Mmmhmmm. Lol. A nice lady walked over from a soda (small restaurant) that was a few steps away, and she informed us that she had called the authorities about this sloth a couple of hours ago and that no one had come yet… This compassionate Tica also turned out to be the widow of our former landlord, from when we lived on a coffee plantation at the bottom of Calle Leon, back when we were pregnant with our daughter almost 13 years ago. Small world!
Our makeshift roadside rescue group then collectively came to the realization that MINAE (Ministry of Environment & Energy) was who we needed to contact about this. Two representatives from MINAE made it to the scene in less than 30 minutes, and after some barbed-wire limbo and dancing in the tall grass, our sloth friend was safely in a crate, on its way for a medical checkup and proper relocation. What a remarkable way for us to return to PuraVidaVille, having the opportunity to help rescue a sloth the day after we got back from our trip to New York. This beautiful country is full of surprises, and there’s always an adventure around the corner. You just have to let the journey unfold.
