Spit in your Eyes!

For the last few weeks I've been feeling the sort of agressive tendancy that makes one want to learn the intricate workings of a chainsaw. Hmm. For a while I thought it was a phase but it seems to have deeply rooted itself in my foreboding personality so I have decided to welcome it. Course, because I suck at being a meanie, I have royally screwed up at times but usually nothing that a savage growl and display of one fang doesn't clear right up. This was useful on my Sunday expedition.

If you are hanging on a limb, jump down because thing 2 is still cold, though, finally learning how to layer his sweaters!. Allright, already, I'm getting to the sweater. Only, I couldn't work on it this weekend on account of the fact that I needed to find some way to get three llamas who haven't been haltered in over three years to walk 2 miles through people's yards, old hayfields, three rock walls, a ditch with a running stream, and some very remote muddy (puddle filled) dirt roads. I might have prefaced this by telling you that all my new llamas seem to have a terrific fear of walking through water. It rained for two days before we picked them up. Now, the astute might mention the use of a vehicle and trailer to move said animals. Hear this, the truck was wrecked last week (no one was hurt but hubster has been a REAL joy to be around - what is it about asking for directions or ramming a shopping cart into an old lady's car in the parking lot of the local grocery store that brutalizes their tender machismo?) Oh, me? I was talking about something else. A trailer might have been practical but trailer owners are becoming more rare around here as farmer after farmer goes out of farming so their children can go to college, rack up tremendous debt, and end up working for some large corporation that steals all their time and a little more. Plus, the dear woman I got the llamas from felt sure we could do it...so, we did. Witness, the leader. Julio is the smallest, yet he is the alpha eunich (none of them, thankfully, are intact)and insists on walking in the front of the line. I led him home most of the way, except I was given Simba for crossing the stream. Gee, hubster, did you enjoy watching me trip on my skirt and fall on the rocks trying to get Simba, who is pulling back and blowing snot bubbles out his nostrils, to cross a 6 inch wide stream of water? To the Dungeons! Anyhow, we managed to get the TWO home, only two because the youngest, a pretty little white llama we call "Merlin", cut and ran back to his barn about half way home. We went back for him and hubster and he bonded immensly on their lonesome trek back to the farm. You may have noticed a wretched beastie that looks like an obese sheep in the pics. She is, in fact, a rather obese wretched sheep named 'Baba'. She came with the pack because her and Simba were born on the same day and they are real buddies. Sheep and llamas are very emotional critters and 9 yrs. is a long time for friends. I had to keep all this in mind since she followed us home by banging her head into the backs of our legs and trying to get in between us and llamas to push us away. What a bossy broad!

So, there we were, offering ourselves most humbly as small town Maine entertainment to the neighbors and further fostering the belief that we are a pack of wierdos who will do just about anything. I blame it on my redneck heritage. My favorite 'you know you're a redneck' joke is the one where you know you're a redneck if anyone in your family has ever died immediately following the loud declaration, "Hey, ya'll, watch this!" It is so true it hurts with the laughing!

Monday was a day of pouring rain and recuperating but the llamas are loving today - a new pasture full of raspberry bushes and grass, clouds so they don't get too hot, and four strange humans who pick the carrots FOR them, and hand feed them! They seem pretty happy - and Julio and I are definitely bonding! He does a high pitch 'whinny' that sounds like a horse doing opera....bad opera! All joking aside...the llamas are well but thing 2 just came in from hanging ghosts from the trees to tell me the sheep have escaped the fence and are fancying the juicy kale in the garden. TELL ME, AGAIN, WHY MUST WE WAIT UNTIL LATE AFTERNOON TO BEGIN THE DRINKING OF WINE?