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

So the forecast said “morning showers clearing”. Stephen let the grateful ‘paca out of their confinement. You can imagine what happened next. Yes, the howling southerly came back.

We go out after dinner to check on them, and they are all up in the back of Gallop taking shelter under the neighbor’s gum trees, and the wind is picking up and Victoria (who’s not in her prime, you’ll recall) is shivering. Drat. We troop back inside, plug the sewing machine into the adapter, and whip out a Victoria-sized cover. By this time, it’s getting dark (I reckon it’s already “dark”, but Stephen observes that it will get darker, and he’s right).

We suit up, head out, and commence to attempting to round up the lot of them in the dark and driving rain. It’s usually easy as pie to collect them, but the night and the wind and rain has them quite rightly thinking the two of us are nuts, and they see no reason to go where we apparently want them to. Victoria, who’s a smart cookie, spots the shelter and heads for it, but this is her mistake, as it lets us corner her and get the hastily stitched cover velcroed onto her. As soon as the gate is open, she bolts, and spends the next five minutes flying around the paddock like some queer alpaca batman trying to run out from under her new black cape. (I’m standing there, trying not to have an aneurism imagining her breaking a leg in the dark.) Finally, she calms down enough for us to start trying to get them up over the ridge again, but by this time, Galadriel has taken the cria and Jim and vanished in the black.

Over the next hour, we chivvy the ones we can still see over the ridge, down the drive and into the sideyard, then go back to try to find the three prodigals, shining the big X-Files flashlight through the rain into each nook in each paddock in turn until we find them and drive them down to the others (with a detour all the way down to the stream, natch). By the time we finally get them all into the sideyard and throw down some hay, *I* am soaked to the skin from the hips down (Stephen can now swaddle himself entirely in Gortex) and we both consider ourselves richly deserving of our Canterbury Cream-spiked hot chocolate. *whew*

The forecast *today* was for “morning showers clearing” as well, but today we waited until they well and truly cleared. This meant some very baffled alpacas watching us come and go on our errands.

Here’s the new shed. The gate is roped, nailed, and propped in place, until Stephen can dig out and level the front a bit more.

Here’s the cria, standing proud in his little yellow rain slicker. Mostly they don’t need covers, but he was barely a day old when the storm started. As as for Victoria, well, she’s an older girl and she was shorn quite late in the season, so it’s not unreasonable to give her a bit of extra help.

And here’s a pic of the kitten and the other alpacas, because, hey, they’re all cute, too. Sorry, none of the ones with Jim in really came out. Oh, you can really see in that last one the size difference between Concetta (the little fawn) and the two big girls.