Slothly Imaginings

by Molly Ball ‘05

Rosy always was a live wire. Not only did she mutter and sputter as she swung round the rainforest canopy, she was usually in violation of the Sloth Law of Averages: the law that, on average, a sloth moves at .015 miles per hour. Of course, her family wasn’t concerned just with the numbers—it was the principle of the thing. After all, they only had Rosy’s best interests at heart. And besides, what would the neighbors say?

“It…just…ain’t…right…” croaked the lively Mrs. MacCready, as she hung upside down, suspended from a particularly supple branch.

It was whispered that Rosy’s mother had mated with a jungle cat, that this was the source of her ceaseless motion. Others claimed that she had an uncle who was addicted to betel nut juice and had joined the other hopeless chewers in Bahia. This, of course, was all hogwash. Rosy’s father was a pleasant enough tree-dweller from a few hundred yards away, and three-toed sloths (even hyperactive ones like Rosy) don’t chew the stimulating betel nuts—it wears down their teeth too quickly.

Rosy made a misstep that any other sloth would have avoided.

Sloths are generally not prone to gossip, though. No, their taste runs more towards poetry, preferring rambling epics packed with so much description that the listener can doze off for a few hours and not feel that she missed anything. Of course, this practice made the oral tradition of the three-toed sloth a little bit patchy—it was rare to find a sloth-cub who had both the patience and wakefulness to memorize these from the absent-minded storyteller who grew increasingly groggy as she aged. Rosy had been fascinated by these tales. Bernadette, the storyteller, spoke of ancestors as big as a whole tribe of baboons moving together (the size of an “ely-font” Bernadette said—whatever that was). These gargantuan creatures knew no forests, instead roaming across treeless, windswept plains. Legend had it that they had been driven off by hairless bipedals a few thousand years back. These creatures, though lesser in stature than Rosy’s ancestors, had hunted the ancient ground-sloths from the plains, almost to the point of obliteration, until that first enlightened sloth crawled upward, ever upward, into the welcoming branches of a green-leafed tree.

“One small step for sloth, one giant leap for sloth-kind,” as Bernadette was fond of saying. This was the point at which true sloth history was said to have begun. Moving into the trees spurred the development of a many-chambered stomach, essential to the digestion of leaves and an innovation that allowed for increased leisure time. Free periods of time allowed sloths to turn their minds from the base details of day-to-day survival and focus on more elevated matters. They were on the brink of civilization. There would be high art, literature, advancements in science, in philosophy. But first, there would be rest; the average modern sloth of modern times sleeps fifteen hours a day in a series of judiciously-spaced naps.

Rosy chafed against this life, longing for the ancient days. She knew that limbs as quick as hers would have been an asset, not a liability—creatures that lived on land could not possibly amble as slowly as the modern sloth, could they? How Rosy wished she could take her place amongst these benevolent, rapid-moving creatures. No more dirty looks, no more “slow down, whydon’tchas!” Rosy would, for once, fit in.

But Rosy was no fool. She knew this path was closed to her, that she would never bridge the gap between present and past. She had made her peace with this. But it still galled her that she would never be able to stalk the forest floor in imitation, no matter how poor, of her predecessors. The reason for this hung right in front of her face: her claws, so graceful, so well-curved as they clung to branches upside down, made ground travel nearly impossible. As surely as she was anchored to the claws, the claws anchored her to a tree-dwelling life.

Much as she might have cursed her claws for separating her from the earthbound sloths of another day, Rosy never dreamed of an end to the trees themselves.

These were the thoughts that plagued Rosy as she went through the motions of her early-evening swim. After a good half-hour, she pulled herself out of the river and into the trees. She swung faster than usual through the treetops, propelled by worries about the alienation that permeated her life. Utterly consumed, Rosy made a misstep that any other sloth could not have helped but avoid. In her hurry, she had missed a branch, and now she tumbled downwards—a sloth-shaped stone thrown from the forest canopy.

It was only a moment before she hit solid wood. Catching hold, Rosy found herself dangling from a limb that was already heavy with sloths—she had almost dislodged the aged Mrs. MacCready from her place. It appeared that the whole clan was here, and the entire assemblage turned to glare at Rosy, narrowing their wide eyes in disdain at her ungainly arrival.

Mrs. MacCready was the most irate of all.

“Frightened me half…to…death. Incompetent nincom-poop—can’t…swing.. properly! I thought you was a…a…another jaguar. Like the one what got…Bernadette…Think yer so…smart…You don’t even…have algae…ya quick-movin’…mangy-haired…jangle-clawed wreck of a sloth! You…disgrace…us!”

Rosy’s horror registered on her face. Though her seperation from the clan had always been plain, it had never been voiced, certainly not that forcefully. And that last part about Bernadette—and a jaguar?!

“I’m…sorry…Rosy,” offered Fernando. “She was…eaten…this afternoon.”

Rosy panicked. Met with the double-assault of bad news and name-calling, there was no one in whose fur she could comfortably bury her head and mourn. Not knowing what else to do, she fled off into the maze of trees, following one branch, then another in a haphazard, wavering path.

Rosy had always ventured farther afield than any of her fellows. She knew parts of the canopy her parents hadn’t even dreamed of, was familiar with twists of the river that no sloth of her acquaintance had ever seen. Now, in her distraught state, she swung her limbs faster than ever before, taking enormous quasi-strides, treading the air above her toes like a drowning centipede treads water during flood season. Rosy had never been so deep into the jungle, but she took no notice. Her only thought was to be away, away, a…!

Rosy nearly fell from a tree for the second time that day, but this time, it was not due to carelessness. The trees just suddenly ended.

What could she do? Her kind could never outrun the creatures that did this.

“Ended?” Rosy thought to herself, incredulous. Trees didn’t end. The forest just went on and on forever. Why, if the trees just stopped…And then she realized. If the trees just stop, what could begin but the plains, the windswept plains of the storyteller’s tales? Rosy looked wildly around, rotating her head first this way, then that, giving her nine-vertabrate neck a good twist so that she could take in the full 270 degrees of vision it afforded her.

This was the land of her ancestors! This was the look of the ancient days! This was a glimpse into her heritage! This was—wait a minute! —this was ugly!

She sniffed the raw air. The cloying jungle scent had dissapated long before she reached this site. Charred stumps littered her view, and in the distance, a tree was being hauled away. It actually took her a minute to realize that it was a tree—this was the first time Rosy had ever seen one as a stripped-down shaft of wood, parallel to the ground. A tree to Rosy was above all something raised, something elevated. A tree grew upwards from the ground, then out to form the branches that literally linked the parts of her life together, that linked her to life. Much as she might have cursed her claws for separating her from the earthbound sloths of another day, Rosy never dreamed of an end to the trees themselves. To her they were like the storyteller’s tales: a portion of sloth history that should never be erased.

And now, looking at the rapid erasure that was taking place before her very eyes, Rosy’s belly began to growl in an angry revolt at the sight of so much wasted food—just think of the sloth babies all those leaves could nourish!

In an act of unplanned fury, she lept to the ground with a low hiss, and began scratching menacing symbols on the side of the tractor with her lengthy, knife-like claws.

Rosy knew from the old stories that her kind had not always depended on the trees. She knew that another way was, at least hypothetically, possible. But a voice that lay deeper within her knew that this solution was not to be within her lifetime. The thought of a treeless, windswept plain—an image that had once summoned up a sense of pride, of the strength of centuries behind her—and was filled with the aching pangs of a furry belly gone slack with emptiness.

 What could she do? Her kind could never outrun the creatures that did this. What good would it do to scamper back and tell her clan that they must move…move? Ha! This was the very thing for which she herself was under attack. No, Rosy was swinging solo on this one.

Rosy’s eyes lit on the orange cube in the distance, the one that appeared to be dragging away the tree trunk.

“They always return to the scene of the crime,” Rosy said to herself, and settled in to do what sloths do best: wait.

Her instincts had been correct—soon enough the boxy orange beast came rumbling back over the hill. Rosy waited until the hairless bipedals crawled down and went away to launch her attack. She littered the machine’s gears with a rain of Amazonian hardwood. She pelted them with a steady stream of detritus, inside and out. She broke its windshield. Then, in an act of unplanned fury, she lept to the ground with a low hiss, and began scratching menacing symbols on the side of the tractor with her lengthy, knife-like claws. Contact with the harsh metal made her claws ache, but she persisted, etching images of snakes, jaguars, dripping fangs, and other portentous symbols into the paint. Finally, with the air of a job well done, Rosy calmly made her way back into the tree.

Rosy knew her efforts had been victorious. She winked at the retreating foreman, then turned and made her way back into the jungle.

With dawn came the workers’ rapid discovery that their logging machinery was dead. The engine only sputtered after a few tries, and the supervisors were called in—two strangely over-dressed men, clad from head to toe in a most unnatural shade of white.

“The machines are totally non-operational. Tractors, saws, everything. Quite a bit of sabotage, eh Cyril?” said one.

“Sabotage my ass! Mr. Sharpe will have our heads—this will put us at least two weeks behind schedule! We’re already contracted out on the week of the 22^nd to do that acreage over by the waterfalls. We’ll never finish up here! Do you have any idea… any idea, Jordan, what this will do to us…?”

“Calm down. We’ll improvise. I know! We can tell him that the natives refuse to work—they fear a…a…haunt, a hex…a bloody spirit or some such thing!” Cyril sputtered for a bit, just as the engine had.

“Think he’ll buy it?” he finally asked.

“He’ll have to. You think Sharpes’s about to come all the way out here to look?”

Rosy meanwhile, up in her tree, had not caught every word that passed between the two. As she saw one of the men turn in disgust and walk away from the site, back towards the jeep he’d arrived in, she knew her efforts had been victorious.  Rosy winked at the retreating foreman, then turned and made her way back into the jungle.

In the coming decades, Rosy would find herself telling the story over and over again, weaving an elaborate description, embroidering layer after layer of intricate detail, until her adventure was a properly-constructed sloth legend with all the classical conventions. Still, Rosy’s narration lacked soporific powers. Even the slow-paced legends of sloth history took on depth and drama when coming from her mouth. The little ones chased after her for stories, and even full-grown sloths would slowly crane an ear to hear her tales.