Well, to be honest, I had unconnected snippets of dialog written before, and a vague concept of "Bodie and Doyle Visit the Zoo", but no plot and no theme. So, the "sloth" challenge was a godsend. It was exactly the missing element I needed to pull everything together.

The real trick was figuring out where to start the story, before or after the action.

And I love tapirs, don't you? I used to call them "tapir pigs" when I was very small, visiting them in the Washington zoo. Bodie's trivia, as far as I understand, was all basically correct. Though Doyle will never believe it.