Courtney Colman thought the eight-hour drive to Pembrokeshire was her 29th birthday present.
The sloth turned out to be only half of it.
Courtney, from Norwich, first spotted Tuppee four years ago when he appeared on BBC’s The One Show.
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She adopted him on the spot, in the way you can adopt a zoo animal, which is to say from several counties away and with a certificate.
Tuppee lives at Folly Farm in Begelly, a long way from Norfolk. Sloths being sloths, he was never going to make the trip himself.
So for her birthday, Courtney and her partner Travis did it for him.
One knee, no rush
Inside Folly Farm’s Sloth Forest enclosure, the birthday visit took a turn.
“I turned around to see Travis down on one knee in front of Tuppee in the sloth enclosure,” Courtney said, as reported by CreatorZine.
“I said yes.
“We got engaged in front of the sloth I adopted four years ago. It really was special.”
Tuppee’s reaction went unrecorded. It was probably slow.
Folly Farm was quicker off the mark.
“A huge congratulations to this happy couple who got engaged at our Sloth Forest enclosure,” a spokesperson said, confirming the pair had travelled eight hours to visit Courtney’s favourite animal.
“So it seems it was the perfect place for her partner to pop that special question. How lovely.”
Why It Matters
Animal adoption schemes used to be a certificate and a fridge magnet.
Increasingly they work like fandom: a sloth gets a few minutes of national television and picks up supporters who stay invested for years, invested enough to build a proposal around him.
For attractions like Folly Farm, that loyalty converts into the kind of marketing no budget buys, personal moments that visitors film, post and share entirely off their own backs.
The park got a viral-ready engagement story without lifting a finger. Tuppee lifted even less.
Proposal content remains one of the most reliably shareable formats online, and venues have noticed, with zoos, aquariums and farm parks quietly turning memorable enclosures into engagement backdrops.
No wedding date yet. Whether Tuppee makes the guest list is a question for the venue.
He’d want plenty of notice either way.
