s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

Smitty and Clare are here ! They came over on the evening ferry & luckily, the terrible weather we had yesterday has gone & we’re back to lovely sun (although not as warm as Sunday). That was all I get to see of them, though, as I’m off to Melbourne for the rest of the week for training. Woo.

Some more llama anecdotes (because who doesn’t love reading stories about other people’s pets ?):

As Stephen mentioned, Jim completely taken charge. Some friends of ours who came up on Saturday actually told us “You’ve got a good guard llama, there!” as he stood at attention at the gate, watching them drive up. Sunday, I took a folding stool out to the paddock to read a bit in the sun, and I’m pretty sure Jim actually kept the alpacas away from me until I’d set the stool down and let him have a look at it. He stood broadside between us, backing his ears at them if they tried to edge around him. Once he’d satisfied himself that the stool wasn’t going to leap up and eat anyone, he moved off to graze and the alpacas came over and had a sniff.

Stephen described the trip down to the stream paddock, & Pointer bouncing around like a stuffed toy on acid. After stomping around in the mush and the buttercup, our plan was to bring them back up, let the alpacas loose and take Jim up over to the gallop paddock — we got the halter off Oak & let them have a bit of chaff and hay (Jim now gets the yums first and makes the ‘pacas wait their turn). You should have *seen* the look Jim gave me when I tugged the halter and said “let’s go”. It was so obviously an “Excuse me? I did my bit, now I get some hay. Hello.” Like, we clearly didn’t understand how this worked. Hee hee. “Fair enough,” we said.

This Sunday we were blessed with one of those Spring days that makes the whole season worth while. Clear blue sky, shining sun, gentle breeze- just lovely in every regard! (but we are making up for it today with rain and a cold southerly- that’s Spring for you!) We decided to do some work with our camelids, getting them more halter trained and generally more used to people mucking with them.

(As an aside a day or two ago Jim the Llama finally settled-in sufficiently to realize that he was twice as big as those pesky little ‘paca. He is now clearly in charge. Tam witnessed a spit-fight between Jim and Oak that Oak clearly lost.)

Anyway, we haltered up Jim and Oak and went for a walk, with Pointer off-lead following behind. Pointer has such a strong herd-instinct we can do this safely, as he will always stay within 10 meters of the other two.

The combination of warm, sunny weather and the excitement of going on a walk was a bit much for Pointer, and he commenced hooning and pronking all over the place (thus the title line “full of beans”). A very amusing time.

We took them down to the stream paddock to work on their stream-crossing skills. We got Jim to jump across twice, but then that was enough for him. The burbling water is a bit freaky, apparently. Once we get the new fence for that paddock done (which should happen later this week once another load of timber arrives– that and the NGC came and marked the gas pipeline so I don’t accidentally drive a fence post into it) we will put the boys down there for a few days so they can get used to the stream on their own time.