Michigan Girl Realizes Dream Of Meeting Sloth, Is Promptly Bitten By That Sloth

Careful living your dreams; they may come back to bite you, especially if your dream is to meet a sloth.

That was the case for one teenage girl who got to meet one in the typically sloth-free wilds of Saginaw, Michigan.

According to her mother, 15-year-old Amarianna Ramon's dream was to meet one of the rainforest's laziest creatures. Lucky for them, exotic pet shop Custom Creatures happens to host a "Sloth Encounter Experience" every Sunday.

Attendees get to take a picture with Sid, a Hoffman's two-toed sloth.

“A sloth is her favorite, favorite living creature," Ramon's mother Christina Perez told MLive.

So they showed up to one of these encounters and all they got was a bite wound and a series of rabies shots.

If you're unfamiliar with sloths, go ask your girlfriend. She's probably really into them for some reason.

Sid The Sloth May Have Sneaky Speed

“It was a strike like a snake,” Perez said of the moment Sid went rogue.

Well, at least you'd see a sloth winding up for this sort of attack and have several seconds to perform evasive maneuvers right?

Wrong.

“It wasn’t in slow motion at all. It happened so fast I didn’t even realize it happened.”

So what Perez is claiming here is that these notoriously slow rainforest mammals have some sneaky speed that none of us saw coming. She said she and her daughter didn't notice the bite wound until they returned to their car.

“We got to car and she said, ‘I think I’m bleeding. My shirt is wet,” Perez said. “She pulled out her arm to show me and sure enough, there were two puncture wounds and blood running down her arm.”

The sloth bite turned into an even bigger todo than your average sloth bite. The 15-year-old had to undergo a series of rabies shots, while Sid went into quarantine.

“She cried for like 24 hours straight,” Perez said, adding that her daughter was "devastated" by the incident. She was afraid something detrimental going to happen to this animal. It’s so frustrating. I paid $100 for my daughter to be bit essentially.”

Some would say that's the ultimate sloth experience.

But yeah, that's less than ideal.

Sid was checked out by veterinarians and was found to be healthy aside from a bit of dental disease. Considering, sloths often have fungi growing on them is a clean bill of health.

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