Silbury’s Diary Herefordshire Walking Festival
The other day our people did a VERY strange thing. They cleaned up our dung pile – you know, the one in the yard (I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before) and then they locked us in the yard and just waited. They stood
around and we could hear them saying things like: ‘Yes, I think he’s about to go!’, and ‘She looks ready…’. ‘What are they on about?’ we said, and a stand-off ensued.
As a reader of ‘A Llama Writes’ you will know that llama dunging, like all aspects of our lives, is a communal activity, and that where one of us wants to ‘go’, others are sure to follow. So when Long Meg had beaned, and the rest of us were about to start, in rushes ol’ two legs with a plastic bag on his hand and scoops up her dung! WHAT!! This he hands to our gentle female two-leg, and she ties it up and writes Long Meg’s name on it! What a cheek!! And of course, once we have decided to go, we all need to dung and every one of us suffered the indignity of
having their beans scooped up, bagged, signed, sealed and delivered to our doctor’s.
A week later our people could be overheard talking to each other about how the dung sample results had come back from the doctor’s as negative and that we were a healthy bunch. No worm, no fluke. Well, I could have told them that. I mean, you only have to look at our glossy coats and know we’re doing okay. Having said that, Callanish, who doesn’t have a reputation for being the sharpest girl, (apparently this is because she is blond?) was spotted eating a length of bailer twine. Our people tried and tried to get the twine out before she swallowed it, but after two minutes, the twine had gone. Well, they paced and worried and got the doc in, but nature took it’s course which in the case of a cud-chewing llama means she regurgitated a ball of plastic string and spat it out. Excellent! Doc said he’d once seen a cow with a whole hay net inside it. I makes me weak at the knees just to think about it. But, the cow recovered with just a line of stitches along her tummy.
New best friends Diana and Ian have been out with us this month. Good weather meant the llama trek over Ewyas Harold Common was glorious. Diana would have liked to stroke my splendid red mane on the walk, but this is a bit of a problem for me. Get the halter on me, yes. Llama trek, yes. Cuddle me, not really. What our people and I say is have your touchy-feeliness with me when you’re grooming me before we start off. If you really MUST touch a llama on the trek then get stuck into Stenness. He’ll put up with pretty much anything. So, Diana and Ian both stroked Stenness’ neck. Four-legs and two-legs happy! We llamas love meeting new people – sure to mean we are off on a trek somewhere, and this is great. Back at the Corrall, a dipper of cereal was provided for each of us, but this is simply too exciting and it’s quite
impossible for us to eat from the proper dipper. The food in the OTHER dipper always looks best.
Special treatment for us ‘working llamas’ as we get the mix, and it’s very funny seeing the others getting a little peeved when they don’t have any food. Of course, it wouldn’t be funny if I didn’t trek and didn’t get any extra food, but seeing as I go out practically every time we’ve new guests to escort, it’s not my problem. Ha ha ha.
We’ll be in touch soon with more news from the llamas at Old King Street Farm.
