What am I? Chopped liver?

Some of you remember that I have a llama.  She has noticed that the camera has been pointed in every direction but hers. 

Is that your camera pointed at me? (Nose close-up
for Jane.)



About bloody time!



Do I stick my nose in your food?  Back off, girlfriend...

Much better.

Apria is a far cry from my boy, Hoosier.  She's bigger, crankier, and much more camel-like.  Some of it may have to do with the fact that she's mostly blind.  Some of it may have to do with the fact that she's middle-aged (just ask me how I know this to be true).  Some of it may have to do with the fact that she's just spitting distance from her nasty-camel relatives in the gene pool.  This spring, I have to have her hooves trimmed.  HAVE to.  I may need to call the zoo and have them send out the guy with the rhino tranquilizer dart gun.  At least my shearer had vision of foresight and sheared her closely enough that we can squeeze another year in between shearings. 

While I'm not happy that the woman with whom I dealt on the llama-trade lied like a rug and took full advantage of my naive-ness, I guess Apria could have ended up in a worse place.  At least she is well-fed, she got the ten-pound matted fur coat trimmed off and we pretty much don't mess with her.  She's got her two sheep to look after, shelter and goat t.v.  What more can you ask for?

Summer's Over!!!

Can I hear a few amens?  I was stumbling across the living room this morning at 4:30 (dog toys, mouse bits, gnawed marrow bones - it's a jungle in there) when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a little green light...blinking at me.  What the?  Once I got a light on and let the dogs go barreling out, I realized it was the 'Icy Conditions' light on my new indoor/outdoor remote thermometer.  I repeat, what the??  Then I looked at the outdoor temperature:  34.1 degrees.  It's September 11, folks. 

So, even though it is forecast to go up to 80 tomorrow, I am declaring Summer officially O.V.E.R.  Just to prove my point, I pulled out the cucumber plants, which were way skeevy anyway.

The Pearlies spent a chilly night outside again.  After noodling it over this morning with my herbal tea and no breakfast (had to fast for 14 hours for a blood test - it's gruesome), I decided that, if the Pearlies were too stoopid stubborn to go inside a nice, warm coop for the night, Mohamed would bring the coop to them. Just call me Mohamed Sweezie Mohamed.  I am going to build an enclosure around their roosting area.  It's just what I need - another project.  On this subject, I had an interesting conversation with my doctor.  She has Guineas and likes them.  But her approach to her limited animal husbandry is, what she calls, the Darwin Approach.  She orders 50 keets from Murray McMurray and, after six weeks, lets them loose.  When they've all been either picked off or took off, she orders more.  I told her that I thought this approach was not a great omen for her patients.  She thinks I'm a riot.  I think I am serious.  My approach seems to be Marshmallow Woman - or, I Am Here For You, Please Make My Life A Living Hell.

Hoops are going up over the Swiss chard, which is healthy and dense.  Like nothing else in my garden.  I am still on a day-to-day watch with Flora, but we seem to be making a tiny bit of headway.  Kay (the Angel in cute acorn jewelry) came over on Sunday morning and we rassled sheep, goats and a camel.  They all got Ivermectin shots and Apria got wormed.  She is definitely a five-man project.  So everyone is done for now.  I just checked my second favorite apple orchard and they have apples, so an apple-picking trip may be in this weekend's forecast.  Everything on the job front is static, so I am taking the stance that no news is good news.

We had us a camel rodeo!

Lordawmighty.  It was not a pretty sight, let me tell you.  Kevin Ford arrived early morning and I had closed the gang in the shed for the night - since there was rain forecast for the next 200 days.  He set up and we moved the three sheep through quickly and without too much fuss, although Linden seemed to feel the entire process was way beneath his dignity.  He's an eely thing, for a fat little sheep.  I always stop to admire Juno's beautiful, black, dense, velvety pelt.  She is such a beautiful sheep.

Then I went into the shed to put on Apria's halter.

It got real exciting after that.  She was surprisingly good about my putting the halter on.  And she came out without too much hesitation on the lead.  Then she noticed that there was a foreigner in the mix (Kevin) and we had us a hootenanny!  She was a whirling kaleidoscope of dirty dreadlocks.  She bucked.  She bounced.  She carried on.  Then she finally dug her heels in.  Part of the problem, of course, is that her vision is impaired.  We were finally calmed down when she stepped in a feed dish.  We repeated the dance a few times until we got her moved over to a sizable tree and tied her lead tightly to it.

It wasn't too bad at the start - Kevin had to work his way through about six inches of heavy felted fiber on her neck.  And he is a blade shearer - no electric gizmos for him.  Apria was wary, but he was making headway until....he neared her legs.  Now Hoosier was no fan of leg shenanigans, either.  But hoo-ha, my Aunt Marie!  Hoosier was nothing compared to the appearance of the Evil Inner Camel!  She bared her teeth, she screeched, she gurgled, she spit, she kicked, bucked, danced and looked like a possessed thing.  I braced her on one side, Kevin draped himself over and gingerly clipped her legs and haunches.  He laughingly said there was one llama he sheared that would put his head back and spit straight up.  And then it rained down on everyone.  I kept a very close eye on her head after that. 

The "Before".

"Does my head look fat?"

The process was punctuated by worried bleats by Linden, who has taken quite a fancy to Apria.  I don't blame him.  The entire experience would have chilled the blood of even your most shock-resistent teenager.  After about 20 minutes, we were both breathless and all that was left was her mid-section.  We decided that it was a good idea to just shear her down from head to toe and not have to revisit this Llama version of The Exorcist for another year.  Then we looked down at her hooves.  They need trimming.  Then we looked at each other, and I busied myself gathering wool (she must have been carrying a 10 pound wad of felted fiber on her neck), while he hurried to cram his blade and kit together.  I kidded him that she was a perfect warm-up act for the next three llamas he was heading off to shear.  While he laughed weakly, he sure was moving fast toward his car and escape.  I think a gallon of Rescue Remedy is in order for hoof trimming.

Sigh.  So, it wasn't the "wool" that made them look fat.