Although it was a predominantly quiet month for Debbie, on one of our tracking outings, Debbie was found with ants in her pants. Whilst we watched, she put on a real show, moving faster than we’ve ever seen her move before, and seemingly searching for something!
In the space of 10 minutes, she shimmied up the tree…
shimmied back down again…
veered left…
and then right.
Until she finally nestled into the fork of a sea grape, finally content with her chosen spot.
We’re not quite sure what motivates these spurts of energy in sloths. As you know if you’ve been following Deborah for a while, Debbie (and most two-fingered sloths) are pretty motionless throughout the day.
On this particular day though, it was very windy, so perhaps she was trying to find good shelter from the wind, as her trees are very close to the beach and pretty exposed to the sea breeze.
Whatever the reason, it was lovely to see Debbie active and healthy once again after the quiet months since Kiwi left!
For those of you who started out as Tango’s adopters before moving over to Debbie, this one is for you: Tango is back in the forest!
Tango was rescued back in February, and since then he has spent eight long months recovering at the rescue centre. You may remember that this was the reason we moved your adoption across to Debbie while he was in care. His recovery was slow, and there were days when we worried, but he never stopped fighting. This month, he finally went home.
We released him at the exact spot where we found him, and watching him return to the trees was a moment the whole team had been waiting for.
Unfortunately, Tango will no longer be an adoptable sloth. We did not put a collar back on Tango, as his data can no longer be used for our research. This is because Tango spent eight months in care away from the forest, and in our data, he officially counts as a mortality: if we hadn’t stepped in and nature had taken its course, he would not have survived, so continuing to record his data would give an inaccurate picture of life in the wild.
But that is on paper only. In real life, Tango is very much alive, back where he belongs, and simply getting on with being a sloth. We’ll keep an eye out for him and make sure he stays out of trouble.
Tango, right after being released back into the wild.
Thank you for being part of Tango’s story, and for welcoming Debbie into your hearts while he was away. Your adoption will continue with her, and we’re so glad to have you following along.
