Of course, the very behavioral traits that made this guy so amenable to my rough veterinary handling soon became cause for concern.  Initially, I was pleased that Padrino and his friend Chamuki showed such interest in becoming friends.  While the other three llamas hung back, shy and skittish, Padrino and Chamuki greeted me at the gate, nuzzled my nose, and followed me around the pasture as I scooped poop and picked weeds.  What personable llamas, I thought. I felt pretty terrible about Padrino’s miserable start at our house, so I it was reassuring that he still seemed to like me.  

Those of you with llama experience know what I soon found out: Padrino and his buddy Chamuki had some pretty significant boundary issues.  Reading some of the many llama books, web pages, and articles I’d collected into a llama library, I became frightened that I was creating two llama monsters.  After several sleepless nights spent worrying about Berserk Male Syndrome in llamas, I expressed my concerns to the Littles and to Baxter, both of whom emphasized the importance of setting boundaries by telling the boys to back off and putting my hand in the air. Unfortunately, neither seemed particularly awed by my attempts at a firm, “GET BACK,” even when I held a tennis racquet in the air above my head. Within a few weeks of their arrival, they were marching right into my personal space, sticking their noses in my face and pulling at my shoelaces and ponytail. The low point in our deteriorating relationship occurred one morning as I added a few llama pellets to Chamuki’s bowl – and got a face full of green spit. Reflexively, I yelled at him, slapped him on the nose, then walked into the tack room, wiped the goo off my face, and cried. 

Well, it wasn’t long before the SWLR volunteers were back to pick up Chamuki and Padrino and bring them back to the Littles, leaving us with three young males: Wadi, Sajama, and Ramah.  Now that my more demanding llamas were out of the way, I thought, I can begin to get to know these other guys.  It was time to start serious training, which equaled serious investment in building training pens.  Eight hundred dollars’ worth of cattle panels later, I had some very nice looking catchpens, but the boys didn’t want to come near me and, with Paul still off in the mountains, I had no way of herding them into the nice little school I’d set up. I tried luring them into the catchpens with some llama treats in their bowls, but whenever I walked close enough to shut the gate, they bolted out of the pen.  

Next

Once again, I found myself weeping in the tack room in frustration, wondering why on earth I’d gotten into this whole mess.  Two months into this experiment, llama ownership wasn’t turning out to be the easy fantasy I’d expected.  I felt like an utter failure.  Not only were the boys totally uninterested in carrots, but I was unprepared for llama care in every way possible: Paul had taken his truck for the summer so I was hauling hay, bale by bale, in the trunk of my Jetta. The shingles were falling off our barn. I worried constantly about unknown unknowns: what would happen if a snake but one of the boys while I was at work? What if someone broke a leg? I had no trailer to take the animals to the vet and no truck to haul anything. On top of it all, I had a 30-mile commute each way, every day, and was working 50 hours a week.  Part of me desperately wanted to call SWLR and ask them to take the llamas away, but I’d made a commitment to the animals and to the organization and I felt terrible about letting everyone down. 

Well, that was a year ago.  It’s now August of 2006 and we’ve had our llamas for fourteen months.  We’ve had our ups and downs since then:  icy cold temperatures and howling winds this winter; an infestation of nasty red ants; hay that’s gotten steadily more expensive.  We have a seeming infinity of weeds to eradicate – I feel like the Sisyphus of milkweed. We’ve had some minor crises as well, including a torn ear, a sore ankle, a cut lip, and a bad case of indigestion.  And, of course, the routine llama stuff: picking up hay, scooping poop, finding time to do training, and dealing with health issues, including toenails and vaccinations, gelding, fighting teeth, and shearing.
 
In short, llamas are a lot more work than either of us ever expected, and that’s on top of draining jobs, long commutes, work travel, dog care, family obligations, housecleaning, social lives, and finding time to get some sleep and exercise.  Yet I can happily report that the thought of calling SWLR to surrender our llamas hasn’t crossed my mind since last summer. In fact, last winter we adopted Zip, a retired, 12-year old packer with dropped pasterns who needed a new home.  We renamed him Zed, to better reflect his molasses-slow movements, and to my joy, he’s taught our younger boys that carrots are a GOOD THING.  We recently discovered that his passion in life is fresh cabbage leaves.   How can you not love an animal whose ears perk up when they see you holding a head of cabbage?

Next