The owners of a café in Costa Rica got a surprise Christmas visit from a burglar, albeit a pretty lethargic one.
Surveillance footage from Café Milagro in Manuel Antonio shows a sloth sneaking into the restaurant after hours in search of a snack. The café's owners, Travis Day and Adrienne Pellizzari, posted the video to Facebook on Dec. 20.
“The greatest #sloth video you will see this holiday season,” the post read. “When was the last time you had to kick a sloth out of your bar?”
Day told the Daily Mail that the café is often visited by monkeys or toucans during the day, but that the sloth was the first of his kind to make such a brazen move.
"The sloth must've slipped through the gates after we'd already closed," Day said. "They're very common in the area."
The video posted on the café’s Facebook page begins with a version of “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” sloth-style.
“Twas the week before Christmas, when all thru the café, not a creature was stirring, but for a sloth who came to play,” text at the start of the video reads.
The surveillance footage begins with the sloth emerging from beneath the counter, eyes glowing in the light from the camera. He climbs onto the counter and begins spinning a display rack playfully as he searches for food.
The creature’s downfall literally comes when he starts snooping under a piece of cloth covering what appears to be a chair and -- eventually -- loses his footing. He takes a header onto the floor.
The commotion caught the attention of a security guard, who thwarted the leaden larcenist, the Daily Mail reported. Day and Pellizzari were called to the café in their pajamas to rescue the hapless creature and return him to the outdoors.
They watched the footage of his caper the following morning.
“We didn’t realize just how hilarious it was until we shared it with family and friends,” Day said.
The video was spread widely across social media. Day and Pellizzari are enjoying the sloth’s moment in the spotlight, which, like the sloth himself, is proving slow to fade away.
"So, how about that time even National Geographic was sharing our #sloth burglary video!?" they posted on Facebook Tuesday, a day after the video was shared on National Geographic's website and social media pages.
"While we have sloths that can regularly be seen in nearby trees, this was the first invasion of our actual restaurant," Day told the Daily Mail. "We have a resident sloth named Terrance who can regularly be found behind our restaurant, but this one was a new visitor."
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