January 2 - All About Sloths
A sloth is an extremely slow-moving animal. They would move more quickly except they have very little to worry about. It seems they have it all figured out. There's just no good reason to be hurrying, scurrying, or flapping about like a chicken with its head cut off.
Have you ever seen a chicken with its head cut off? I have.
My grandfather used to have chickens on his dairy farm. From time to time he would butcher a few of them. After chopping off the chicken's head, he would let it flop around the chicken yard until it realized it was really dead. (Or something like that.)
Eventually he realized that this was bruising the chicken too much. So somewhere along the line, he learned to place the beheaded bird into a concrete circle where it couldn't hurt itself anymore. (I'm not sure if those concrete pieces were used for anything else...or where he got them from.)
But about the sloths....
Today is the day for hugging them, and hugging them in a location that has both an "a" and an "i" in the place name.
Why those two letters? Because ai is another name for a (three-toed) sloth. Ask any crossword or scrabble nut.
The place with those letters doesn't have to be a legal entity, like Arizona or St. Paul (think about it) or Madison. Hawaii would be cool. You could hug two sloths there. It could be something as simple as your patio.
Neither do those letters have to appear alphabetically in the place name, nor do they both have to be in one word. So Mike's bathroom or any high place would serve.
Where will you get the sloth or sloths? Admittedly, that could be a challenge, but dedicated sloth-huggers are up to it. In fact, if this practice is new to you, finding an experienced sloth hugger first may be your best bet.
Sloth Huggers International has a site (sorry I don't have the address...Google it) where you can rent the services of a sloth hugger for a given period of time - hours, days, etc. Rates are surprisingly reasonable.
In a pinch, you could celebrate this special day vicariously and have one of those sloth huggers do the job in your place...er, in a properly-spelled place, that is.
Astute readers may have noticed that I haven't distinguished between hugging two-toed and three-toed sloths. Good news! It doesn't matter which variety of sloth you choose to hug today (or to have hugged for you)! Any-toed sloth will do.