The Discovery Channel lies.

I'm serious. They show all those neat, cute little animals in nature and you come away thinking "How cute. They're so adorable. I just want to hug one."

Take the sloth. The Three-toed sloth. Slowest motherfucker in the world, and looks like that guy Barney from Andy Griffith. You almost feel BAD for the guy, 'cause he can't move all that fast, he has green algae growing on him, and you think some jaguar is gonna eat him for dinner, while the sloth is too slow to escape. Yeah, the poor, poor sloth...

Bull-fucking-shit.

I was in Panama a couple years ago in Jungle School. In Panama, you get to see nature at its worst. You see huge-ass spiders that catch BIRDS and eat 'em. You see colorful little froggies that are cute, but make poison that'll kill a stadium full of Rosie O'Donnell's. You come across ants that will literally chew you up.

But you'd THINK that the sloth is the most harmless of them all, wouldn't you?

My buddies and I are walking from one area to another, and we see one on the ground. It thinks it's going mach-3 to get away from us, but it's taking 5 minutes to go 3 inches. The thing really looks like its moving in slow motion.

My buddy Smitty decides to have a little fun. He walks up to the sloth and barely nudges it with his boot. The sloth falls over with a sound like "UGGGGG." The sloth apparently gets scared, and drops a huge turd out of its ass, but of course its in slow motion.

Now, we're dumb-ass Rangers, so of course we laugh at this pitiful sloth laying on the ground, crapping itself. This is sport to us. Now that Smitty has an audience, and he nudges the sloth again, and again it goes "UGGGGG," and falls back over.

A Jungle School instructor happens by and sees us and our new playmate. He takes a look at Smitty and says "Don't fuck with the sloth."

Yeah sure Sarn't, we'll leave him alone.

The Instructor walks away and Smitty decides to outdo himself by nudging the sloth once more, and then helping it get up on a tree limb. He moves his foot to nudge and...

SWIPE!

Wolverine berserker-style, the sloth pulls out these HUGE 4 inch claws, and quick as lightning swipes at Smitty's jungle boot.

Jungle boots are so tough, snakes can't bite through 'em, and they have metal plates underneath them incase you fall in a pungee pit. This Sloth laid WASTE to those boots. Cut 'em open to his skin, and boogied up a tree so fast, we didn't know WHAT to think. The Jungle Instructor came back and said

"Fucked with the sloth, dintcha?"

Segway* to a week later. We're doing a patrol, and set up an L-shaped ambush so that by the time the OPFOR (opposition force) gets through, so we can ambush 'em, and head out to a bar later on.

We're lying on the jungle floor, waiting like silent death. We're Rangers, we're badasses, and we OWN this motherfucker. All sorts of shit is running through my head, "Will I initiate the ambush correctly? Will the platoon see the Red Flare I shoot up to signify Cease Fire?" A myriad of thoughts, as I wait for the OPFOR to walk into our deadly jaws.

We see their point man. He's a kid, 19 years old, walking like he's John-fucking-Wayne, trying to keep noise discipline down. I look down the line, and silently give the "Enemy seen" signal. I silently count down... 3....2....1...I'm about to start firing, when all of the sudden I hear:

"BAROOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!"

I literally shit my pants. SHIT IN MY PANTS.

A Gibbon ape (or some related primate) had climbed down to observe our little ambush and decided to initiate the fucking ambush himself by screaming right into my ear.

So now we badass Rangers, we dealers of death, we GODS OF WAR...are running for our lives, trying to get away from A MONKEY who ALSO shit himself going up his tree.

And that shit landed right on me.

So now, I have shit IN my pants and ON my Kevlar helmet.

We didn't live that one down for a looooooong time.

[On this site, we spell "segue" in the American way "segway." Fuck the French.]