Luisa Cadena, "The Sloth is Still in Her Garden."

No, the poor thing is still around, look! (Here is) what he’s just eaten. That garden has not been eaten up yet. Look! This is just freshly eaten. Hmmm. Where will he go when he finishes this off? Where is the poor thing going to search? He will go to one of the places he knows. To his garden (his chagra). Where will he go? Well he will go pitifully slooowly climbing up a tree. When he sees the bromeliads, well that’s his chagra, that’s what he eats. You, you said that he is pitiful . . . He will climb pitifully slowly, first with one hand then another. (At that rate) what day will he get there? When he gets there, he’ll sit in his garden and he will pull a (shoot) out and eat it. Pull another out and eat it. Then, when he finishes it all up he will cry ‘Mamaaaa! Mamaaaa! Mamaaa! and someone will hear it when they walk by. That means his chagra is finished. He descends back down to the base and then goes to search (for food) so he can eat, to another garden, a new chagra. Then he will sit there instead. He only eats the tender new leaves of the bromeliads, since he is a sloth. Say again how how pitifully..... He climbs so pitifully (slow). Haven’t you seen it? He won't go fast like some monkey. He will climb sloowly up a tree vine. He won’t climb the tree itself, but a vine on the tree. You know how there are those vines, spread out all over? That’s what he’ll climb, and he’ll arrive at his chagra. When he gets there he will eat up all the tender shoots. Then when he can't get down, after crying pitifully, he.... How does he cry? Mamaaa! like a human baby. It can be heard from far away. It is as if he is saying Mamaa! Mamaa! Because his chagra is eaten? When it is finished, he cries pitifully because he can't get down. After that, he grabs on and backs down (the tree). Then, once again, wherever his food is that’s where he will go climb. That is where he’ll eat. He lives with those (bromeliad plants), they are his garden (his chagra). Well once when (my friend) Leticia, cut a stick off chyuw, and hit him pitifully. When she would hit him, he would grab himself there When she would hit him here, there he would grab himself And when she’d hit here, he’d grab himself there. Then when the poor thing's foot broke off chyuw, he falls backward like this I was so angry, saying ‘Why did you kill him?’ She killed him! She eats them. I am not someone who eats sloths. I feel pity for them because they go about so pathetically. So I don’t eat them. That is how sloths are.