Exotic animal store Sloth Encounters shuttered after ‘LI’s Joe Exotic’ accused of abuse

This sloth shutdown was sloooooooow moving.

After 18 months, Long Island officials finally put an exotic animal store — and its seven sloths — out of business.

Larry Wallach charged $50 a pop for 30-minute sessions where customers could pet, feed, and hang out with the South American creatures and other exotic animals at his petting zoo, Sloth Encounters, in Hauppauge.

He removed the store’s sign and sloths last week after he was threatened with contempt of court for continuing to operate. Local authorities had been trying to shutter the facility, once a pool supply store, since its June 2022 opening.

While state law doesn’t prohibit owning a sloth, the Town of Islip — where Sloth Encounters set up shop — does bar the ownership of “wild animals,” unless they’re in a zoo, a lab, a licensed educational facility, or “a carnival, circus or public outdoor show” which requires a special permit Wallach didn’t have.

Wallach, 66, is an animal exhibitor licensed by the USDA who one critic labeled “Long Island’s Joe Exotic.” Earlier this year, he was linked to allegations of bear cub trafficking when a man in Florida caught with two Kodiak cubs claimed he was training the animals for Wallach, who has not been charged in that case.

“Larry is just a ‘Tiger King’ extra who didn’t make the cut,” quipped John Di Leonardo, an anthrozoologist who heads Humane Long Island.

Sloth Encounters used cuddly, cartoonish images of sloths to bring in customers and advertised itself as “an educational journey,” but life inside was actually hellish for the nocturnal sloths, who are famously slow moving, have razor sharp teeth and claws, and prefer not to be touched, according to court papers and an investigation by the Humane Society.

As part of their probe, Humane Society investigators caught one employee on video smacking a sloth with a water bottle, while Wallach was recorded grabbing the animals by the back of the neck as their arms flailed in distress, according to the footage and a USDA inspection report.

The sloths, along with a kangaroo, capybaras, and other animals, were kept in crowded, unsanitary conditions, the Humane Society alleged.

When another customer reported being bitten by a sloth in August 2022, Wallach allegedly lied to USDA investigators, the agency said in an inspection report.

In February an inspection revealed one kangaroo, one cockatoo, two capybaras, three degus, three chinchillas, seven sugar gliders (a type of possum), and 10 lovebirds, along with the sloths, inside the store.

It’s unclear where Wallach took the animals after the store’s closing, first reported by Newsday.

“As long as he removes them from the town and complies with the code that’s all the jurisdiction we have,” lawyer William Wexler, who is representing the town in the case, told The Post.

Wallach has racked up nearly 40 USDA inspection reports since July 2022 and has had several run-ins with authoritiesand animal welfare groups over the years.

In 2017, the Nassau County SPCA found a malnourished wallaby in his East Rockaway home; in 2020, Wallach posted a Facebook video, flagged by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, showing himself using the noise of an electric prod to frighten a tiger cub named Sheba, whomhe kept in an enclosure with broken floorboards. He also allowed Sheba to play with his husky and used his feet to pin Sheba’s head to the floor, the clip shows.

In 2023, Wallach was fined $250 for intending to sell Nile monitor lizards, which are venomous and can grow up to seven feet long.

“By not revoking Larry Wallach’s license, the USDA is complicit in this,” said Di Leonardo, who believes Wallach sent the animals once kept at Sloth Encounters out of state.

The USDA did not respond to questions about why Wallach’s license keeps getting renewed.

Wallach vowed Sloth Encounters would return and denied any wrongdoing.

“The animals are all fine, they’re just not in Islip,” he told The Post. “They’re away. No one needs to know where my animals are.”

He blamed animal rights advocates for his troubles.

“I’ve been doing this, raising animals, exotics, for 40 years,” he said, adding he once worked as a “wildlife cop” and with the SPCA. “They don’t even tell you that. It’s like I had no life before I was in Islip with the sloths.”

He said the sloths are socialized, denied keeping them in overcrowded conditions, and said the employee who hit one of the animals “did the right thing the wrong way.”

“The amount of people that have come through my doors, 99.99 percent are safe and happy. That’s the truth,” he said. “We’ll be back soon.”