Read Online The Cry of the Sloth by Sam Savage - Free Book Online Page B

hemmed in—it’s difficult to know what one feels nowadays. Packing the books has been particularly slow, because I keep finding ones I had forgotten I owned, and I end up sitting on the floor reading, my quiet breath and the occasional scrape of a turning page drowned, as I mentioned, by the constant susurration of the rain.
    Among those forgotten books, I discovered a huge encyclopedia of mammals, which Jolie must have bought years ago when she imagined she could write stories for children with animals in them, with animals in the stories. Or perhaps it descends from my father, who was fond of animals, especially dogs. My mother, who is still alive, says he had always wanted me to become a veterinarian and was disappointed when I decided to major in English, though I don’t remember him ever saying anything about that to me. Right now, the life of a busy veterinarian strikes me as quite interesting and desirable, as something I might have striven for had it occurred to me.
    I must never have looked at the book before. You can’t imagine how many animals there are that almost no one has ever heard of—sportive lemurs, needle-clawed bush babies, warty pigs, oriental spiny rats, punctated grass-mice, golden-rumped elephant shrews, and fairy armadillos, to pick a few at random. Such fabulous names—it’s obvious that among those creeping around in the jungle in pith helmets were at least a few mad poets. And what do you know about the ai? Next to nothing, I imagine. So you’ll be surprised to learn, as I just have, that it is a variety of three-toed sloth, even though it has, in fact, three fingers. For some reason the early naturalists were quite confused when it came to fingers and toes. This seems to me odd; are you ever confused about them? I wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that they wore gloves, the naturalists, I mean, in those days often wore gloves. All sloths have three toes. As for fingers, some have two and some have three. The ai (
Bradypus torquatus
) has three of each, that is, six at each end of it, evenly divided. It moves so slowly and hangs out (literally) in such damp leafy places that green algae grows on its fur. As has happened to me during the current monsoon, or so it seems. There is mildew on everything, and I myself am feeling quite mossy in spots. As for inactivity, I don’t think I’ve moved two hundred yards in the past two days. Where would I move to, with the rain coming down as if for Noah’s flood? The sloth is, I suppose, the only green mammal. That’s odd when you think about it, considering how many green creatures there are otherwise, grasshoppers and frogs, for example. The green coloration is thought to help it hide from predators; from jaguars, I suppose, who must mistake it for a pile of leaves. The resourceful animal is, furthermore, alleged to breed colonies of “cockroach-like moths” in its green fur, though to what useful purpose the book doesn’t let on. Nor do I get a clear picture of those little creatures—I can’t imagine a less cockroach-like insect than a moth. I have not personally, even during the worst of my pluvial solitude, bred any of those, though I did a few nights ago find something awful crawling inside my pajama shirt. I had turned off the light and had just lain down on the bed. I always begin the night on my back, because it’s a yogic principle, and also lately because of the noise in my chest, which seems to become less intense in that position, or maybe just less audible, due to the soft pillow folding up around my ears. Though the creature must have been in there ever since my shower an hour earlier, it only began moving about when it found itself being crushed between my back and the mattress. It possessed, as I could tell from the texture of its walk, little spines along the backs of its legs. It was like being stabbed with rows of needles. I of course sprang up and tore off the shirt, pulling it violently off over my head. In