Sloth Bites Teen! Ruining Life Long Dream!
March 20, 2023 10:16 AM   Subscribe

From Saginaw Township Michigan, Cole Waterman brings you a twisty-turny local news saga featuring a local family, a local exotic pet store, a kinkajou custody dispute, and every possible county, state, and federal agency pertaining to sloth bites.

The teen is alive. The sloth is alive.
posted by Hypatia (28 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
this has got to be the most frustrating item to read for today.. here's a gem: “I paid $100 for my daughter to be bit essentially.”

the display of "humanity" (i.e. all other creatures are here for our use and/or enjoyment) is just stunning

sad all around
posted by elkevelvet at 10:37 AM on March 20, 2023 [5 favorites]


Yeah, the sloth and other animals should be somewhere that isn’t around *any* of the humans in this saga.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 10:39 AM on March 20, 2023 [3 favorites]


At my work we do a daily icebreaker question, usually benign things like "what's your favourite colour?"

Today, the question was "would you rather own a pet parrot or a pet sloth?" so this link was very much appreciated. Parrots are the (relatively) ethical and safer choice. #TeamParrot

(For what it's worth, I don't think owning a parrot is necessary ethical either. But compared to a sloth?)
posted by Pitachu at 10:50 AM on March 20, 2023


we babysat a grey parrot for a while

the housecat, Fluffy (orange and a psycho, naturally), would lie atop the big parrot cage and dangle her paw in ever so casually. Then Fluffy stopped doing that, and avoided the cage. I wonder what happened....

Mr. Bird was a sweetie, he only ever kissed the (non-feline) members of the household
posted by elkevelvet at 10:53 AM on March 20, 2023 [5 favorites]


Apropos of nothing: this is my hometown and I used to work for this paper. This is absolutely the kind of thing I would have been tasked with covering.

For example: I once covered a local old coot/caretaker of a historical building (read: his personal hobby horse) who was in a Caddyshack-tier feud with a groundhog on the grounds. Sadly, this was during the pre-social media Internet and the link has not survived in the mlive archive as far as I can tell.

Other news oddities of that brief, three-year stint included: a man convicted of minor fraud sentenced to wear a literal sandwich board detailing his crimes in public; a fake "bishop" who nearly defrauded the city council out of several buildings, who went everywhere with an entourage holding several elaborate parasols over him; and a mayor who lit her own car on fire to collect the insurance money.

...on second thought, let's not go back to Saginaw. It's a silly place.
posted by The demon that lives in the air at 11:03 AM on March 20, 2023 [39 favorites]


I have to say that I was impressed by the enterprise-level reportage about this exotic animal story, given the clickbait that I tend to see on local news sites.
posted by whir at 11:37 AM on March 20, 2023 [2 favorites]


Mr. Bird was a sweetie, he only ever kissed the (non-feline) members of the household

You got lucky. I lived with a Grey for a number of years and was bitten so many times - including once on the lip from during ill-advised attempt to give Mr. President a smooch while he was hanging from the door of his cage (an aggressive power position) - that I would show off the little half-moon injuries at work with a weird sense of pride. He would terrorize guests by nipping at their heels and/or waiting outside of the bathroom, only to attack when they would open the door. He was also hilarious and smart and, once certain antagonizing elements of the household were removed, occasionally cuddly and sweet. In short, he contained multitudes. But he could be a mean sonofab, he could.

I still dream about him. He's a live and living elsewhere.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:47 AM on March 20, 2023 [4 favorites]


It is always important to remember -- with sloths and with people -- the difference between slow and lazy.
posted by Etrigan at 11:57 AM on March 20, 2023 [5 favorites]


a Caddyshack-tier feud

This is the best phrase I'm likely to read all day.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:59 AM on March 20, 2023 [6 favorites]


I am genuinely devastated to not find evidence of that article online. It ended with a closing quote from the guy where he was saying how he had grown fond of the creature and was hesitant to upgrade his defenses. Something to the effect of "it makes it hard to use the fox urine on him," said so wistfully it's stuck with me for... *counts on fingers* oh jeez, like 15 years now.
posted by The demon that lives in the air at 12:09 PM on March 20, 2023 [5 favorites]


So who debauched the sloth?
posted by McCoy Pauley at 12:36 PM on March 20, 2023 [5 favorites]


You'd think a lifelong dream of not being bitten by a sloth would be easy to achieve.
posted by star gentle uterus at 12:37 PM on March 20, 2023 [14 favorites]


Depends on how much of a challenge you want to make of it - for example, Siegfried and Roy probably had lifelong dreams of not being bitten by tigers.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:42 PM on March 20, 2023 [1 favorite]


"Now he's up there in Alaska digging in the cold, cold ground
The greedy fool is looking for the gold I never found
It serves him right and no one here is missing him
Least of all the newlyweds of Saginaw, Michigan

We're the happiest man and wife in Saginaw, Michigan
He's ashamed to show his face in Saginaw, Michigan"
posted by clavdivs at 1:18 PM on March 20, 2023


Oh good grief -these are wild animals, not toys or pets. Any creature, no matter how slow-moving or cute looking will bite if it is handled when it doesn't want to be and I get the impression that sloths just want to be left alone. If Sid originally came from a zoo he probably wasn't used to being handled much at all, and had probably reached his breaking point.

I'm more than a bit horrified that there are still pet shops that sell this sort of non-pet species, Pet shops here don't usually sell anything fancier than small rodents and generally don't have them on display - when I bouight a rat a few years ago I had to wait six weeks while they bred one for me. Pet sales are pretty strictly regulated npwasays, even for reptiles and insects, although I have a clear memory of seeing a lion cub for sale in a London street market in the sixties.
posted by Fuchsoid at 1:23 PM on March 20, 2023 [4 favorites]


Ever since I read this a metal song has been running through my brain:

{Metal eighth note bass thrum} {Slashing guitar riff}
SLOTH BITES TEEN! {guitar}
RUINING LIFE LONG DREAM! {guitar}
SLOTH BITES TEEN!
RUINING LIFE LONG DREAM!

I paid a hundred dollars for my daughter to be bit! (Essentially)
I paid a hundred dollars for my daughter to be bit! (Essentially)
I paid a hundred dollars for my daughter to be bit! (Essentially)

SLOTH BITES TEEN! {guitar riff back in} RUINING LIFE LONG DREAM! {slashing guitar}....
posted by Hypatia at 2:25 PM on March 20, 2023 [13 favorites]


I think we could rearrange "Violent School" to work nicely
posted by elkevelvet at 2:43 PM on March 20, 2023


They've looked at life from sloth bites now.
posted by mykescipark at 2:53 PM on March 20, 2023 [17 favorites]


OH MY GOD THAT'S BAD i love it
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:26 PM on March 20, 2023 [2 favorites]


So who debauched the sloth?
Thanks McCoy for opening up a delightfully musty room of memories for me. Madeleines ain't in it. Now I want to go back and re-read all the Patrick O'Brian books.
posted by mono blanco at 3:55 PM on March 20, 2023 [1 favorite]


I feel a deep sense of kinship with this young lady, as she now joins me in the incredibly exclusive league of humans who have been imperiled by a sloth attack. We're both from the same part of Michigan, too, which is a curious twist.
I also get to recycle this metafilter comment from.... 13 years ago?!

Also, for those with further questions, here's a video of me explaining the situation to a captive online audience during lockdown.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 4:24 PM on March 20, 2023 [8 favorites]


A few years ago, I read an interview with someone who was researching sloths in the wild who was attacked by one that raced down from treetop to ground level to get him.

"It all happened so fast", he said.

Sloths can move really quickly when they want to.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:39 PM on March 20, 2023


The half facts about where the sloth was from and when didn’t line up very well, did they?
posted by clew at 11:05 PM on March 20, 2023 [1 favorite]


I really don't want to hear about teens having lifelong dreams ruined.

Lifeshort dreams seems more reasonable.
posted by srboisvert at 5:11 AM on March 21, 2023 [1 favorite]


Complicating the matter is Perez had previously purchased another exotic mammal, a kinkajou, from the pet shop for which she still owed a debt. This in turn led the pet store to author a post on social media naming Perez and offering $3,000 for information leading to the kinkajou’s return.

Such a greedy sum! I think it'd be best if she tempered her lust to own exotic animals. I'm sure it invites the envy of other pet-owners, but it sounds like she needs to swallow her pride unless she has a gluttony for punishment to face the wrath of a sloth again.
posted by AlSweigart at 10:44 AM on March 21, 2023 [4 favorites]


They should return the kinkajou and collect the $3000.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:52 PM on March 21, 2023


So I looked this up, in case anyone was wondering: the two-toed sloth can bite, while the three-toed sloth can only waggle its arms about in a menacing fashion.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:13 PM on March 21, 2023 [1 favorite]


Reminds me of this fine story featuring "many red flags" about a dude getting taken for a ride, getting his ride taken, and some bumbling police.
posted by zenon at 2:18 PM on March 21, 2023


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