Ethan returns from school one day to find a brown, slimy, clawed creature, hanging upside down from a tree in his front yard. His mom, Claudine, tells him that the creature was the pet he had asked for. Ethan is horrified at the sluggish pace at which the creature moves. He feels sick just hearing it eats its own poo and he decides to take action so that it can be sent packing. He sneaks to his bedroom and dials a society for abandoned animals, telling them that there is a weird-looking creature which has ticks and is covered in some greenish goo, dangling from a tree in his front yard. He asks them to hurry and to send it packing, back to the jungle where it appears to belong. When a man asks for its name, Ethan names it - 'Slomococco, the Lazy Sloth'. After the sloth has been taken away, Ethan realizes that his real present had been hidden for him. His grandmother, Ruth, tells him that his mother had asked for the sloth to be dropped off as punishment for his failure to tow the line.