A sloth in our yard
Late June 2016
Time seems not to exist. Days melt into weeks and I lose track of when we are. I usually don’t know what day of the week it is or what day of the month it is. Therefore, I’ve stopped using exact dates for headings.
I’m going to write about a bunch of miscellaneous stuff today. It may or may not tie it, but it’s what’s happenin’.
Let’s start with the sloths. We were driving over to Rosemary and Courtney’s. As we came up the hill towards the gate, there was a bundle of fur laying in the road. It didn’t move as we approached.
Dawn was driving, so she stopped the truck and I jumped out. I thought the poor thing had been hit by a truck and was suffering. I wanted to help.
As I got close to the victim I recognized it as a sloth. These are kinda cute mammals that weight about thirty or forty pounds with long legs and claws. They usually live in the trees, but do come down for water or to cross roads. They are incredibly slow animals. I don’t understand how their species has lasted this long. I expect that the jaguars would have no trouble catching them.
Our sloth was obviously not hurt. It just lay there and stared at me. I realized that sloths take their own sweet time crossing the road, so I got back in the truck and we
drove around it.
When we told Courtney about it, he says that they’ll let you pick them up. He was driving down the road and found a sloth right in the middle of the road. Courtney was in a hurry, so he got out and picked it up under its arms. The sloth spread out its arms like it was flying.
This was a momma sloth with a baby on her back. The baby spread its arms out and pretended to fly too.
We have seen sloths in the trees in our yards. They don’t seem to move much, just hang onto the tree and eat a few leaves.
Jim and Frances rent out their house as an AirB&B. They had guests coming and Dawn volunteered to help them clean the place.
After a long day cleaning, she dragged herself into the truck and started up the driveway. When the house was well out of sight, she came upon a sloth in the drive. Remember, Jim’s driveway is really just a path between the trees. There is no shoulder, no way to go around the sloth.
Dawn took it out of gear and waited for the sloth to cross. She sat for fifteen minutes watching the creature slowly make its way across. Then it was thirty minutes. She was tired and hot and wanted to get home. Finally, the sloth made it to the other side and she could drive on.
All of this brings us to the question: Why did the sloth cross the road?
Answer: He had an hour to kill.
Monkey business
Since I’m writing about small mammals, I might as well throw in monkeys too.
I have seen two species of monkeys here, the howler monkey and the capuchin. I have heard some of the long time residents call the capuchin monkeys white face monkeys but my Panama wild life book says they’re capuchins.
The capuchins are smaller and very agile. They move through our trees in troops of twenty or thirty. They don’t make a lot of noise, but we have a row of trees just on the edge of the beach that they use as a highway to move from one side of the property to the other. These are cute little guys. You want to grab one and cuddle it and keep it for a pet. As a matter of fact, this species is often captured and brought to the U.S. for pets.
You don’t want to get near when they are traveling though. They defecate in their hands and fling their feces at you.
As I said, the monkeys use our trees for their super-highway. We sit in our chairs on the deck, sipping a Margarita and watch the circus go past.
The howler monkeys are another story. A little larger than the capuchins and with dark faces, they are LOUD. There’s a reason they’re named HOWLER monkeys. These guys sit in the trees around the house and absolutely blast us.
I don’t know of any other animal that is louder (except maybe rock musicians, or possibly an elephant trumpeting). Their cry is something between the roar of a lion and a 747 taking off. Sometimes they make a sound that sounds like a dog whining. Sometimes they open up and howl. When this goes on for hours, it can be quite annoying.
The other morning, I awoke to the howl of monkeys. I lay there and listened to them, but didn’t bother to get up. Dawn says that there were about forty or fifty of them transiting our yard. She sat and watched them for about a half hour before they were all gone. Enough about monkeys.
Let’s talk about the local fruit (and I don’t mean at the night clubs). Wes and Joyce have lime, mango and cacao trees planted in their yard. They also have pineapple (piña) bushes and watermelons.
The piñas they grow tend to be small, but very tasty. Likewise, the watermelons don’t get very big. I don’t know if this is because of the climate and soil or because of the animals eating them before they get large.
We pick limes from the tree at least once a week. Dawn has started making homemade Margarita mix and it’s yummy.
Speaking of yummy, Cesar brought us a ripe cacao the other day. He broke it open and showed us how to eat the insides and spit out the seeds. It was very sweet, something like a cross between the sweetness of a pineapple and the texture of paste. You pull a seed from the fruit and suck the sweet meat off if it, then discard the seed.
We didn’t put two and two together until this morning. I was working on this piece and forgot what the name of the fruit was. Cesar dropped by and I asked him. When he told me it was a cacao the light bulb went off over my head. The seeds are chocolate. You dry them, then roast them and grind them to make chocolate. Duh!
The monkey super-highway
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