Just beyond the lights of the bar, the tangled knot of green and black pulsated in the hovering gloom. I sensed the dark heart of something there. The desire to know what huddled nearby pulled at me, but more than that—to say yes to his delicious urgency to show me, and only me, something that thrilled him—found me slipping the strap of my backpack over one shoulder. Among the pouts and sighs of my girlfriends, I felt myself getting to my feet.

Omar, in fact, stood a few inches taller than me, but was even more powerfully built than he had seemed from my chair. “I’m glad you decided to give me a few minutes,” he said, his face blooming with a smile that lit small fires in his eyes.

I followed his shirt, which glowed white in the dimness down the three stairs from the stone patio to a shadowy stretch of high grass, stopping near the delicate branches of a eucalyptus tree. A soft night wind rustled the silver leaves as a full moon watched from behind feathery clouds.

He pointed into the nest of branches. “See? It’s looking right at you.”

I peered but saw nothing. Just fluttering leaves. As I inhaled the clean, bright smell of the tree my heart sped up—Is this a trick? I took a step closer and stopped short. Three feet from my face, a creature with thickly furred arms and legs hung suspended like a slack green hammock from a branch, five-inch curved claws locking it in place, its bandit-eyed face staring out at me. A much smaller, fluffier version, kitten-sized, peered from its hideaway on its mother’s stomach; same eyes, low forehead, rubbery grin. A mother sloth and her baby, something I’d seen only in photos before that moment.

I took a step backward.

“Don’t worry, they’re slow. They sleep all their life, sometimes they die in their sleep. That’s why algae grows in their fur, see the green? But watch out for their hands, their claws. Never let them get you in their grip, they’ll rip you up.” Magnified by the lenses, his eyes examined me. “Are you afraid?”

“No.” But I was, a little.

“Good.” He grinned. “They’re not very smart.”

As if to prove him right, the sloth lifted up one heavy arm—ever so slowly—toward a branch so slender it wouldn’t have supported her infant, curled her black claws around it, and tried to swing. She came crashing down with a thump; the infant rolled away down a short hill in a terrified ball of fur. Blinking, her eerie smile stretching wider across her face, the mother sloth lifted her head from the earth and swung it side to side with a soft bleating sound. She pushed herself to her belly, dragging her torso along like a creature not meant to be on the ground, slowly swimming herself among the long grasses toward her mewling infant.

Omar sprinted down the hill, scooped up the ball of fluff, and ran back to me. “Open your hands,” he said.