Once upon a time, there was a wizard named Wally … I mean a lizard named Larry … No. I mean a sloth named Samuel. (I’m sorry. But when I start writing a story like this, my mind is cluttered with so many fire-breathing dragons, ice palaces, golden apples, and petulant princesses, I get confused.)

Anyway … Once upon a time, there was a sloth named Samuel. I would say he was an unusual sloth, except I recently learned that all sloths are unusual. Even beyond unusual to downright weird.

For example, sloths are so powerful that within seconds of their birth, they are able to do one-handed pull-ups on a branch of the nearest tree. They can sleep, mate, and give birth while hanging upside-down. They have such bad eyesight that they cannot see during bright daylight, which is one reason why (take note!) they are the slowest moving mammals on earth. But who wouldn’t move slowly if he was blind as a bat?

They are also natural-born Hollywood stuntmen, having bodies designed to fall from great heights without causing themselves any harm. This last is relevant because our sloth, Samuel, regularly hung out in a 128-foot-tall tulip poplar tree very close to Loreli Delahaye’s favorite park bench.

Now I will tell you about Loreli. She was a very pretty 20-year-old girl. Not jaw-droppingly gorgeous, like a Greek goddess, but the kind of normal-pretty that puts an “I just saw a field of dancing daffodils” smile on a person’s face. She had a mop of bouncy blonde curls, enormous blue eyes, a pert nose, and a delicate mouth. Loreli was neither tall nor short, but gave the impression of being petite because she was so slender and had such small feet.

Having inherited a sizeable fortune from her grandfather, Loreli Delahaye worked only sporadically while she pondered the wheres and whens of her future. Did she want to devote her life to flora (become a landscape architect?) or fauna (get a degree in veterinary medicine?)

During the period when we meet her, Loreli was taking off the summer to read the complete works of Charles Dickens, ride her bicycle, get manicures, and work on Thursdays and Fridays behind the counter of the gift shop at the zoo. There, she sold key chains, jungle puzzles, plastic dinosaurs, and stuffed animals that ranged from monkeys to anteaters to lions to lemurs to sloths.

All of the “plush” toys in the shop were cute, but none were as cute as the zoo’s real-life sloth, Samuel, who roamed freely on the premises and spent 80% of his time sleeping at the tops of the zoo’s many tulip poplar trees.

Not long after Loreli Delahaye, who was not a flirt, started to work there, she inadvertently inspired a lunatic passion in the heart of Lucas Van Druten, son of Mr. and Mrs. Ulrich Van Druten, two of the zoo’s most generous patrons. Luke was over six feet three inches tall, bulky (steroids?), thuggish, spoiled, and had the social skills of a tarantula. But being a descendent of the storied Van Druten family, who emigrated from Germany in 1798, started out selling patent medicines in West Virginia, and ended up owning one the largest pharmaceutical company in the world, Luke at age 27, was a man to whom few people said “No.”

Lorei didn’t just say it, she shouted it.

Which brings us to an overcast Thursday afternoon in August, and Samuel the sloth.

What I haven’t told you yet is that during Loreli’s four-month tenure at the zoo, she habitually ate lunch on a park bench just up the hill from the gift shop, where Samuel spent a goodly amount of time tucked into the canopy of his aforementioned tulip poplar tree. With an acute sense of smell and phenomenal spacial memory (to compensate for his poor eyesight), he initially identified Loreli as friend. Not foe. Then he came to recognize her as an individual entity. And finally, he started to look forward to her visits.

The thing about sloths, other than that they are soooooooo slow, is that they are utterly impossible looking, and their physiology is insane. They have flattened oval heads, and only two (maximum three) fingers. Their arms are so long (about twice the length of their legs) that they appear to be double (or triple) jointed, and to have been made of hairy Silly Putty, stretched to its limits.

But … and it’s a big “but” … they have such goofy grins, adorable faces, and are so damn cute, it is impossible not to fall in love with them.

Speaking of which, one day when Samuel was hanging out in his tulip poplar tree, Loreli caught sight of him. It was the first time she ever had seen a sloth that was not stuffed and on sale in the gift shop, and she was instantly enchanted! A week later, Samuel slowly, slowly, slowly descended that same tree (I want to be discreet here) to do what sloths do once every seven days and only at ground level. And he found himself in front of Loreli’s park bench, at Loreli’s feet.

She looked down at him and said, “Hello.”

Samuel smiled up at her.

Loreli removed a leaf of romaine lettuce from the sandwich she was eating and held it out to her new friend. He, as delicately as a lover pulling a “she loves me; she loves me not” petal from a daisy, removed the lettuce from her fingers and tucked it into his always-smiling mouth.

After that first encounter, this became something of a ritual for the two of them, and every Thursday, Loreli would be waiting on her bench for Samuel with an assortment of leaves. This continued uninterrupted until one overcast Thursday when the weather forecast was rain. On such gray and gloomy days, even the most ardent animal lovers stay home. So by 1:05 p.m., when Lucas Van Druten arrived hoping for an encounter with Loreli Delahaye, he was all alone.

Learning that she was on her lunch break, the heir to the pharmaceutical fortune began to search for Loreli outside. In short order, he espied her on a park bench around the corner from the gift shop, and without advance warming, permission, or invitation, he strode up to where she was sitting and slammed himself down beside her. He shoved his body against hers, threw his left arm over her right shoulder, thrust his face up against her face, and jammed his lips onto her lips.

Nobody could have predicted what happened next.

A caped avenger? A masked hero carrying a gun with silver bullets? A wide-shouldered vigilante with piercing blue eyes and a square jaw?

Nope.

It was Samuel. The sloth. He was already hanging by one arm from the branch of his tulip poplar tree and about to descend for his weekly rendezvous with Loreli when he perceived a huge, hostile, SOMETHING down below. That “something” was attacking SHE who always had greeted him with kind words (that he could not hear), a wide smile (that he could not see), and a plentitude of crisp and tasty leaves.

Biologists, zoologists, and animal behaviorists might describe what Samuel did next as nothing more than an instinctive response to non-specific aggression. Or even to losing his grip on a branch.

But Loreli knew better.

Because when Samuel came careening out of the sky and landing smack dab on Lucas Van Druten’s head – instantly extricating her from the amorous bully’s grasp – she was absolutely certain that her sloth friend had dive-bombed her assailant Out of Love.

Samuel, of course, being a sloth (and stuntman) was unhurt.

Lucas Van Druten, on the other hand, came away from the encounter complaining about a dislocated shoulder, a broken nose, and a cracked rib. Worse yet, he informed Loreli that he was going to tell The Board of Directors of the Zoo that he had been subjected to life-threatening injuries from an attack by an unsupervised flying sloth.

But when Loreli countered that if he breathed a single syllable about Samuel to anyone who had ever lived, breathed, or had a heartbeat, she would report his park bench molestation to the police, he backed off.

After that, Loreli and Samuel continued to meet every Thursday afternoon. Their future encounters, not surprisingly, were less dramatic. But who needs drama when the human you love most in the world comes visiting with handfuls of delightful, delicious, digestible, crip and nutritious, bright green leaves?

Copyright © Shelly Reuben, 2025. Shelly Reuben’s books have been nominated for Edgar, Prometheus, and Falcon awards. For more about her writing, visit: www.shellyreuben.com.