Returning Home

Returning Home

Wherever we go or whether our absence is planned or unforeseen, we feel the same.  Regardless if hours or weeks pass, when we enter a feeling of welcome washes over us.  It is as if everything is as it should be.  As the now famous words were spoken in the summer of 1939,
There’s no place like home.  There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.
It seems that many of the living beings who share this planet with us, either through instinct or natural progression, prefer to reside in a familiar habitat.  When they are displaced, they seek to return if they are able.
Destiny Finds Her Way
: How a Rescued Baby Sloth Learned to Be Wild
(
National Geographic
, February 07, 2023) written by Margarita Engle with photographs by Sam Trull is a true story filled with heart and hope.
The tropical rainforest of Costa Rica
echoed with music from colorful birds,
the
eee, eee, eee
of darting squirrel monkeys,
boom, boom, boom
from howler monkeys,
chirps and clicks of cicadas, and a whispering
rustle from the wandering breeze
in green treetops.
Injured and alone, a baby sloth cries for help. These cries alert would-be predators.  Fortunately, humans find the sloth, taking her to a scientist.  The scientist is one of two who founded a sloth rescue center.
The tiny sloth is taken home each night to be fed as often as necessary.  All rescued sloths are named.  Destiny’s injured eye does not heal but her appetite is healthy.  Eating guarumo leaves and hibiscus flowers makes her grow.
Climbing is difficult for a sloth with one eye, but Destiny is determined.  She even assists other rescue sloths in their eating to build their strength.  Soon Destiny graduates from
sloth preschool.
She is taken outside to study life in the wild.  She learns to relieve herself by doing the
poop dance
.
She becomes acquainted with the rainforest animals, their sounds, and the smells.  Due to the loss of one eye, her other senses are stronger.  She slowly moves and climbs from tree to tree.  One day, a year later, her weight is heavy enough for her to be released into the wild.  She wears a tracking collar, so the rescue people and the volunteers can monitor her and keep her safe.  To the top she climbs, toward a life she is meant to live.
Take a moment.  Go back and read the first sentence in this title, quoted above and written by
Margarita Engle
.  This author has mastered the ability to take readers into her narrative with her sensory descriptions.  We experience the assistance received by Destiny.  We experience her growth, her adaptations, and the exhilaration of her delivery into the wild.  Through her personal research at
The Sloth Institute
, Margarita Engle expertly adds facts to this nonfiction story.  Here is a passage.
Smells were fascinating, too.
Hot, moist air rich with savory leaves
and fragrant flowers.
The stink of a tamandua
and the stench of a porcupine.
With the exception of only a few photographs as noted at the close of the boo…