Life comes alive at night in the cloudforests of Monteverde, Costa Rica. Adam and I donned our headlamps, grabbed our jackets and set out one night with a guide to see what we could find. Our first stop was at the home of the tarantula pictured on this blog. When we arrived at it's house, it was hiding so our guide showed us a lil trick to make him come out. Tarantulas sense the vibrations in the ground, so if you scratch the ground in front of its den, it quickly emerges to investigate (or perhaps battle) whomever is there. It sized us up, decided that we were not a big enough threat and returned to its hole. Next we ran into a rambunctious group of coatis (rancoon-like animals with long tails and big noses) scaling the inside of a strangeler fig. They didn't seem to bothered with us, but instead were engaged in a fierce came of tag. Throughout the night we also came accross an emerald toucan and a green pit viper sleeping in trees (luckily the weren't sleeping in the same tree) as well as a leaf bug and leaf cutter ants (don't worry, they didn't bother the leaf bug). But, the highlight of the night had to be the two-toed sloths we encountered. Although one of these sloths lived up to it's name by looking at us, yawning, and falling fast asleep, the other one put on quite a show. It worked its way through the tree it was in, shoving leaves into it's mouth, then hung upside down from its two legs and looked directly at us! Imagine a mini sasquatch hanging upside down from a tree with all of its long hair sticking straight up or rather down towards the ground. It was quite an amazing site. We soon left him alone to finish eating and do whatever it is sloths do (which is not much, since they are inactive 90% of the time). We left the forest with more interest and questions than we had gone in with. The best being, Adam's question the following morning, "I wonder what a sloth would look like if you shaved it?" We have yet to find out.