"Along Came a Llama"

[fiefoe]

Ruth Janette Ruck's account of keeping a llama on their Welsh hill farm is charming and relaxing (for the reader who knows such farm work won't be demanded of her.) Transporting it, clipping its nails, finding out what it likes to eat... everything was a small yet exotic adventure.

• she had stepped on to the rag rug, positioned her little ballet-dancer’s back feet together, knelt first on her right knee, then on the left, sagging a little at the hocks meanwhile, and had finally gone right down with a small thud. Now she would be sitting there in all her glory, with her white neck upright and her draperies of flowing mauvey-grey, fawny-gold, gingery wool hanging down to the mat all round her. There would be no sign of her legs and we called this the ‘tea-cosy position’. Then there was a rattling sound. I knew that she was shaking her head rapidly from side to side, causing the long ears to fly round in circles—‘helicoptering’ we called it.
• The wild, intoxicating idea of buying the little farm, casting aside our previous life and becoming hill farmers suddenly seemed alluring, suddenly seemed possible and suddenly became reality. We sold our Nottingham house and moved, lock, stock and barrel, goats, hens, bees and all to the mountain farm of Carneddi, on the foothills of Snowdon, looking down to the sea seven miles away. It was December 1945.
• * multiple sclerosis: This was a shattering discovery and passed a sentence on me which I found very hard to accept... Ann was just three weeks old when I lost the sight of one eye. I looked through the other and wept in secret at the prospect of becoming blind. Soon I decided that it was better to do something useful and feel ill than to do nothing and still feel ill. Then, mercifully, I became much better and most of the sight returned to the affected eye. It was the beginning of a remission that lasted for a couple of years. There were to be other exacerbations but I did my best not to let them affect our lives and we all carried on as well as we could.
• they were not sheep-like. Their elegant and dignified manner seemed unique and so was their expressive use of the ears to show emotion. They did not have cloven hooves but very small two-toed feet with a black claw or toe-nail on each toe. As they reached for the leaves, I saw that the upper lip was divided almost as far as the nostrils, making two little prehensile lips which manipulated the food.
• Then, as I looked, the urge which had made me write: ‘I want a llama’ in my notebook all those years ago and which had lain buried for so long, suddenly came to the surface like a bubble bursting on a pool. All in a moment, like a revelation, came the feeling that this urge was not a ridiculous whim but a practical possibility... A small voice in my mind said very clearly and definitely: ‘We’ll have one of those sometime,’ and a sensation of great pleasure and excitement came over me. I stood in a dream, looking at the animals and realizing that what I needed was a llama.
• Now we set to work on our autumn tasks, lifting the potatoes, collecting bracken for bedding and gathering the ewe lambs ready to go away for wintering.
• No, wrote the Director-Secretary, there was no reason against keeping a llama in the same way as one might keep a pet horse or cow. They were domestic animals anyway but, he added, they had the nasty habit of spitting... “It is supplied by Nature with saliva in such large quantities, that it spits it out on every occasion; this saliva seems to be the only offensive weapon that the harmless creature has to testify its resentment
• After that, we carried on as one always does when farming. We missed my father’s presence and help a great deal and, at every turn, found little tasks which he used to do and now were not done, also things he had made which were there to remind us of his enthusiastic interest in the farm. <> My sister’s health was deteriorating, Mother seemed to be living solely on her immense inner strength and I worried about them most of the time... Mother was quite sure that she wanted to buy the llama. She felt we needed something new and exciting to distract our minds from the sorrow and anxiety of Father’s death and Mary’s illness.
• Originally the district nurse had come faithfully up the mountainside two or three times a week to give the injections when needed. Now Paul gave them to me. He said he had injected hundreds of sheep in his time so why not his wife? This saved time and trouble for everyone.
• When a vehicle is travelling, the animal inside is preoccupied with the movement and keeping its balance. It is when the vehicle is stationary that the animal may start getting into trouble,
• We woke to the realization that something nice had happened—we had a llama. Paul, the children and I were soon across the field to see how she had survived the night. It was almost with trepidation that I opened the groom’s door, but there was the llama and she seemed to be well.
• * She just stood there, her long white neck and fluffy golden-brown wool bright against the winter colours of her surroundings. She looked as though she alone were lit by a ray of sunlight in the sombre landscape—in contrast with the greyish, inconspicuous sheep grazing nearby.
• I found the llama’s voice likened to the sound of an Aeolian harp, a musical instrument played by the wind.
• The book was an account of the Spanish Conquest of Peru. Even with this, it was difficult to find a name. Naturally the glossary was rather limited; the author had not been concerned with the naming of llamas. We found that ñusta meant ‘princess’ and that it was pronounced ‘nyusta’. This seemed suitable for the daughter of Victoria and Albert, and indeed she had a real dignity about her.
• * The needle of the scales swung back and forth and it was difficult to make a reading. I crouched down, brushed back pieces of straw so that I could see better and, as the needle settled, was able to get the approximate figure... we discovered that the llama weighed about 4 st 6 lb. Whether this was a satisfactory weight for a llama of her age we did not know. By coincidence, six-year-old John weighed exactly the same amount. He was quite well-built but the llama felt extremely thin, with a knife-edged backbone and prominent ribs. I felt a little worried about this but, perhaps, members of the camel family were naturally bony.
• There have been other cases, less successful, where the patient lived for days, and then, perhaps overconfident that a cure was going to be effected, I slackened my efforts and, of a sudden, the animal was dead. Of course there have been times when the situation was hopeless, like the death from grass sickness of one of our pretty fillies. Grass sickness has nothing to do with grass; it is a nerve disorder of unknown origin and there is no cure for it. Cases of bracken poisoning, too, are incurable once the symptoms appear.
• In the past we had found that an injection of this vitamin would work like magic for an animal that was in poor condition and would not eat well. It was specifically for loss of appetite and debility but I had heard that it was sometimes given to horses before a race to give them extra pep
• Quickly she flicked one of the spindly back legs over the hock of the other and rapidly rubbed the outsides of the two back legs together. It was a most extraordinary action. I had never seen another animal do it and one would have thought it impossible if her legs had not had the insubstantial look of boiled sphaghetti. The movement reminded me of a housefly twiddling its back legs together.
• * She was the daughter of Heather, and grew into a chunky little heifer with all the good points of the breed. She had the little bit of extra intelligence that always seems to go with good milking qualities. She was forever foraging on the bleak pastures, was the first to arrive at feeding time and was the one that could wriggle under or climb over the defences that we built to keep the cattle out of the growing hay. If there was something good to be had, Nerys was there to have it.
• If we had kept her, Nerys would never have reached the required size and fatness for a Champion on our poor land but would have lived her life out in obscurity on the hillside. Did we, perhaps, harbour other potential champions? It was strange that a predilection for ponies’ tails had caused the brief spotlight of fame to illumine our heifer’s career.
• I watched intently to make certain that I was not mistaken and that she was not just grinding her teeth. But there was no doubt about it. I saw a slight spasm in her abdomen and a second later a bulge was visibly travelling up her long neck. Then the bulge appeared in her cheek, and the steady rhythmical chewing began. She chewed rather more rapidly than a sheep and much faster than a cow. Her lower jaw moved quickly, left, right, left, right. Sheep and cattle, I had noticed, always chewed with a circular movement, the jaw moving clockwise for a while, then reversing and going anti-clockwise. So the llama was different in this respect too. She chewed fifty or sixty times and then swallowed.
• * As I watched, I began to speculate about how our society would differ if humans had evolved as cud-chewers. Meals would doubtless be hurried affairs, with very large vegetable dishes to accommodate the required bulk. Every well-appointed house would have its ruminating room next to the dining-room, where people could retire to chew in silence. After-dinner conversation would be unknown. Patent medicines would proliferate, with four stomachs per person to medicate. There might be Civic Ruminatoriums in large towns and Cud Caves for hippy gatherings. The tenor of life would certainly be slower.
• Paul and I watched the use of her lips with fascination. The upper lip was divided as far as the nostrils, like a rabbit’s or hare’s, but these two lips seemed very mobile and muscular. She could extend them to reach out, like two little fingers or two mini-trunks, and slide the pieces of carrot into her mouth. They were prehensile, a gun-metal grey covered with a fuzz of short silvery hairs, and they were immaculately clean.
• Huge herds of llamas grazed the mountains, and as many as 15,000 animals from the royal herds would be slaughtered at a single chaco, or round-up. The farmers practised good livestock husbandry and bred their llamas carefully. <> Thus the Incas lived, high in the Andes in their stone-built cities or cultivating their terraced fields, transporting their produce by llama train along the precipitous paved roads, worshipping the sun in gold-lined temples where llamas and ears of maize, wrought in gold and silver, symbolized plenty and fertility, where the Inca, god-king, son of the sun, ruled over all. Here llamas also were venerated.
• As we looked at our beautiful llama, it was fascinating to speculate whether any of her distant ancestors had trodden the royal road to Vilcabamba, the city of the Incas, had carried the treasures of Atahualpa’s ransom to the furnaces of Cajamarca or been sacrificed on the altars of the sun. She had a glamour and dignity about her which seemed to hint at past glories, ancient mysteries and distant tragedy.
• We knew nothing about a llama’s dentition but we noticed that Ñusta had no top front teeth, only a dental pad like all the cud chewers. When she yawned, the mobile lips pouted forward at the beginning of the yawn and then stretched back at the end of it to reveal the dental pad which was narrow and dark grey. She seemed to have four incisors in the lower jaw, big broad teeth
• We only once had an accident in the house and this was our fault. It happened before we had fully realized that it was possible for a baby llama to be completely and naturally house-trained
• We were interested to read in an old army manual that camels were very good under gunfire. The same must be true of llamas. After being used to the nervous temperament of ponies, which quail at loud noises and which are prepared to see spooks round every corner, we found Ñusta’s calm all the more unusual.
• Ann was quite happy for her friend, Mooey, to go away with the others for their winter holiday. By now Mooey was a well-grown lamb with a good fleece. She was off the bottle but had developed a liking for dairy nuts, and she regarded herself more as a little girl than as a sheep.
• We set off along the hidden valley with our firewood. When we were about halfway along it, Ann said suddenly: ‘There’s Mooey.’
  I looked where she pointed and saw a grey sheep lying down just before the beginning of the stony track by the ruined shed. There was a white object close to the sheep.
  ‘It can’t be Mooey,’ I said. ‘It’s got a lamb.’
• ‘Wasn’t it a good thing that we went the long way round?’ she kept saying. ‘We might never have found poor Mooey but now we’ve saved her.’
• While there’s life, there’s hope, I thought, but I had had too many cases of sheep that had died to be complacent. With a sheep like Mooey, the human contact meant something and, as I crouched there, I willed her to live. It was very quiet. A little mouse popped its head out of a chink in the stone wall nearby, looked at us and disappeared again. The light from the electric bulb did not quite illuminate all the dark corners of the ancient stable. The cobwebs in the roof palpitated slightly in the draught from the open door. Was it imagination that made me think there was a little more light in Mooey’s golden eye and that she was showing a feeble enjoyment of the liquid that I was trickling into her mouth? I couldn’t really tell, but I went back to the cottage feeling more hopeful.
• At first I was worried that such a quantity of paper might harm her or that the newsprint was poisonous, but she ate it regularly with no ill effects. In fact she was avid for a certain amount of paper every day and I came to the conclusion that she must need it. Later I asked the vet about the edibility of newspaper and was told that experiments in feeding pulped newspaper to cattle were being carried out. Apparently the cows did quite well on it. Then I read that llamas were able to utilize crude fibre at least twenty-five per cent more efficiently than sheep.
• Her interest in cats was in contrast to her indifference to dogs. These she ignored unless they got in her way. She was a little wary of the cattle and ponies because they were large and sometimes chased her, though she liked Ann’s pony, Dolmen. He was a gentle animal and the two would touch noses and commune with each other.
• * There was no ‘ready, aim, fire’ about it; Ñusta shot, as it were, from the hip without a moment’s warning. Everyone was taken by surprise. For a second, Els didn’t know quite what had happened. Her face and glasses were bedewed as from a fine green aerosol and an unpleasant smell, suggestive of rotting cabbages, filled the air. It was a regrettable and embarrassing incident, not the thing to foster international relations, I thought,
• If she had a mouthful of nuts at the time, they would ricochet round the kitchen, like peas from a pea-shooter, in a most dramatic way. You really felt you were under fire. However, she generally gave warning of her intentions so that you had time to withdraw. Her ears would slam back and she would make snaking movements with her head, pushing her face into yours, munching, with her mouth slightly open and eyes goggling.
• * It was always faces that she aimed at, but if you put up a hand or held a tray or similar shield between your face and hers, it would put her off her stroke. She needed to see the whites of your eyes before she pressed the trigger. This fact often let us get by unscathed. Some people found it convenient to bend low, avert their faces and scuttle past the danger area. It all added to the excitement of our lives.
• She often spat if she were caught raiding the sugar bowl or flower vase and someone rushed to save it. A quick, aggressive movement would usually trigger off a quick, aggressive spit, and this with no warning. You could never push her out of the way. A cross face would swivel round and might deliver a Parthian shot, to your discomfiture, but you could always lead her.
• without it, she might have seemed altogether too mild, too patient and too helpless. She might have seemed an animal of less consequence if she had not had this means of expressing her rich and varied emotions.
• Her long hair now reminded us of clothing. The white of her neck finished in a perfect ‘V’ at her chest and the greyish-fawn of her body met it symmetrically from each side, giving the appearance of a shawl pinned neatly on the bosom. Her legs were covered in short thick fur, like whitish, mottled stockings, while the long hair of her body hung in an even fringe above her knees, like a feathery mini-skirt. For all her elegance, there was also something slightly comical about her attire. <> Her whole body, and particularly her neck, was covered with long single hairs which blurred the outline and gave the appearance of a halo when seen against the light. Her tail was a thick mop of ginger hair. We called it the Feather Duster and she seemed able to do extraordinary things with it.
• her fleece was amazingly soft and clean. There seemed to be no trace of grease in it, and your hand felt as clean after stroking her as it did before. She was a creature adapted for life in an arid climate so she had no need for grease to shed the rain.
• Ñusta had not the agility of a gazelle and we wondered if this was true for llamas also. The design of her feet was such that, even on a very wet day, she left only dampish prints on the cottage floor, nothing like the muddy paddle marks left by the dogs.
• * We noticed that flies behaved differently with Ñusta. They would whirl above her head in a little cloud, but they never swarmed round her eyes or settled on her body as they did with the cattle and ponies.
• * When we were turning the hay with hand-rakes, she would sit down just ahead of us and be part of the scene. We would have to rake round her and pass on, leaving little llama-shaped patches of unturned hay behind us. She was fascinated by the windrows and hay-cocks which miraculously appeared and transformed the landscape for her. She would hurry round to inspect each one, then, when thoroughly orientated, she would lie down by the heap of her choice and begin to eat it.
• We noticed that she lay down much more frequently than the other classes of farm livestock. Perhaps the slender legs were not designed for a great deal of standing... With such a long neck, she could graze comfortably in quite a wide half-circle as she sat. Indeed about half her grazing time seemed to be spent sitting down.
• As the years passed, most farmers began to find that the cost of labour to wash the sheep was not offset by the higher price of washed wool. The netting pens on the right bank of the river also fell down and were not repaired. Sheep washing was becoming a thing of the past. We made our own pen in the lower Clogwyn field and a small pool in a tributary of the river. Here we washed for several years. It was not so effective as the big, clear pool at Tanrhiw, but it served us until we too gave up the washing for lack of labour.
• I knew the danger of the flailing hooves of a swimming animal. The llama was making straight for him, the nearest familiar object in an alien element. She was obviously upset. Whether she had expected the water to bear her weight or whether the coldness shocked her, we could not guess. She didn’t appear to be a very efficient swimmer but she came forward in a mass of spray, with her head and neck reared above the water like a miniature Loch Ness monster... Bit by bit, John cheered up. He was a brave little boy, and now he began to see how exciting it was to have been swimming with a llama.
• Ñusta was fascinated by the passers-by. If she were near at hand, she would hurry up to inspect them. This inspection was a sort of llama-style interview. She liked to look closely into the face of each person—and her head was now nearly on the level of most humans’—and to touch their hair lightly with her nose. Beards were also of great interest. She didn’t exactly sniff at people but would gaze at them intently, inhaling deeply for a few long seconds. Afterwards and less happily, she might take a quick look under the clothing of any skirt-wearing lady who happened to be present.
• Ñusta thoroughly disliked the familiar pats which tourists were inclined to bestow on her. Her feelings were also hurt if people were afraid of her friendly advances.
• Though the rusty brown of the dead bracken looks beautiful where it covers the slopes of the mountains and though it is useful and cheap for bedding, it is really a dangerous weed. It is said to be the most successful weed in the world and covers millions of acres of the earth’s land surface, from just inside the Arctic Circle to the mid-Tropics. It contains a substance which inhibits the growth of other plant seedlings and so spoils the pasture where it grows. It can also be poisonous.
• She showed us a sample of bracken which had been dug up on a Roman site near Hadrian’s Wall and which had lain there for perhaps 1,800 years. It looked just like any bit of bracken that I might fork out of the bottom of the calf pen at the end of a winter. It was pressed flat but the shape of the fronds was clearly preserved. It was interesting that the Romans had used bracken for bedding too... When I came to think of it, I had never seen caterpillars, aphides or even slugs and snails feeding on the plant. I had not realized till then that bracken could also cause cancer... The symptoms of acute bracken poisoning were found to be remarkably similar to radiation sickness... The early June bracken fronds were the most dangerous and toxicity declined as the plant matured.
• In three days John was home again, seeming none the worse for his experience but, alas, none the better. His hearing was not improved. It was the beginning of a long effort to find the best doctor and the best treatment for him, also the best means of helping him to overcome the disability.
• We couldn’t produce any turkey food ourselves, except kale and skim milk, so we were very much at the mercy of food manufacturers. However, the thought of a tasteless, mass-produced bird of doubtful age and origin did not tempt us when we were used to a delicious, home-produced one. We continued to rear turkeys for ourselves and a few discerning private customers.
• Cherry brandy: Paul gave her a drop more. She finished hers before we finished ours, and we had to drink up with our backs turned to her and take the glasses away to the kitchen. When all traces of the delicious stuff had disappeared, she settled down on the mat once more with a satisfied expression on her face.
• * Some time later, Mrs Arnett returned the finished product. It was beautiful—an ounce or so of very soft, very light 2-ply, of a delicate, light camel colour. It felt much silkier than ordinary wool and I thought it would knit up beautifully. Mrs Arnett said she had found it difficult to spin. There was not so much crimp in the individual fibres as there was in sheep’s wool and she found they wouldn’t spin until she had oiled her hands slightly. We had supplied her with brushings and she had quite a job to tease the fibre from the rubbish
• With spring on its way, I began to look out for signs of Ñusta’s coming on heat. We knew nothing about a llama’s breeding cycle except that the gestation period was eleven months. This was the same as a mare’s and we supposed that, like a mare, she might come on heat about every three weeks in the spring. I felt she was now mature enough to show signs of oestrus but I saw nothing.
• A cow comes bulling every three weeks unless she is in calf. It is important for cows to be in calf at the right time, otherwise they are just expensive passengers on the farm.
• They gave rise to the two camel species of the Old World, the bactrian and the dromedary, and the four camel-like animals of South America, the vicuna, the guanaco, the alpaca and the llama. The fossils of giant llama bones had been found in eastern South America by Charles Darwin on his voyage in the Beagle.
• The animal had been domesticated since before the time of the great Inca civilization and used for transport. Only the males were used for this purpose and would carry a load of 100 lb. We read that a single Indian would drive several hundred loaded llamas, carrying gold and silver from the mines.
• Brown Patch was one of those ewes which doesn’t bother much about its lamb, and little Dinky was always getting mislaid. His thin bleat was often heard, as he stood miserably stranded with not a sheep in sight. His mother was probably away attending the hen feeding, where there might be a little corn to be had, or else going round the ponies’ feeding bowls. After a few days, he realized that he had to run to keep up with his mother’s rapid progress round all the likely sources of extra food, and he raced after her like a frail woolly spider.
• * Generally, if someone finds a lamb which seems deserted, it is better to leave it where it is and to tell the farmer so that he may go and see for himself. The chances are that the lamb is not really deserted and that the mother will come back to it when it has been crying for a while.
• Most pet lambs are human-orientated. They potter about outside the house until the front door is opened and then rush up demanding a bottle. If you go for a walk, they follow you just as they would their mothers. But Mr Widdle didn’t; he followed the llama. Although no milk was forthcoming in that direction, those long white legs seemed to attract him and to give him his bearings. If he wanted food, he came to us, but for company he went to the Um...  <> They certainly made an odd pair, Ñusta walking ahead with Mr Widdle a yard or so behind. They almost matched, but not quite; that was the odd part of their appearance. Ñusta was either a very elongated mother or Mr Widdle was a sawn-off child. You couldn’t decide which of them was wrong.
• * The relationship was one-sided. After an initial show of kind interest, Ñusta decided that she definitely did not want a foster child. Over and over again, she made it very clear that Mr Widdle could push off, but he never took the hint. ... Mr Widdle, playing King of the Castle, would be confronted by a furious llama’s face, spitting violently, and then his fluffy castle would heave itself up, as Ñusta struggled to her feet, and he would be tumbled to the ground. This never stopped him from trying again.
• * The massive trunk of the ash, rough and greyish, rose from behind the moss- and lichen-covered stones of the wall. About twelve feet from the ground, there was a niche in the trunk where a flourishing colony of hart’s tongue ferns grew, brilliant green and trailing against the grey bark in a kind of studied elegance. The foreground was veiled by a lacework of fresh leaves. I could watch the birds without disturbing them, perhaps a little hedge sparrow, a tit or two, a wren and now and again the noisy arrival of a jay... At first, the llama was surprised to find me in the Writing Hut.
• They replied that the Indians sometimes shampooed their llamas and ‘clipped them like sheep’, adding that care was taken to shear only in warm weather in case colic should result. This was most interesting but, after the swimming episode, I did not feel enthusiastic about shampooing.
• In our early years at Carneddi, shearing had been a communal event. The neighbouring farmers had banded together to wash, shear and dip each man’s flock and to earmark and castrate his lambs. These sheep days had been pleasant social occasions on which a great deal of work had been accomplished. The farmers’ wives and daughters provided refreshments for the visiting shearers. Countless plates of thin bread and butter, salads and tinned meat or home-killed mutton, rice puddings and rhubarb tarts were consumed. Countless cups of tea were drunk, and chilled butter-milk was brought out as refreshment to the sheep pens, where six or eight neighbours would be sitting on their benches, clipping away with hand-shears. The work was all done by nightfall and that was the end of it.
• As he began to shear up her ticklish left thigh, the llama slowly wilted down into a sitting position, her hind legs collapsing first. We could almost hear her saying: ‘What can’t be cured must be endured.’... I took the collar off but still she sat, not happily but with a determined dignity that I found touching. I had been tense in sympathy with her but now I began to feel happy that the shearing was going so well and was nearly done. It was simpler than we could have expected. I began to feel like a mother whose child has behaved unexpectedly well in difficult circumstances.
• Ñusta looked nice but she looked different. We couldn’t quite get used to the new outline, particularly of the tail. It was the most unusual tail we had ever seen. It fitted neatly between her pelvic bones, like the lid of a box when she carried it down, which she seldom did. For walking, we noticed, it assumed a backward-facing question-mark position, held high above her back, like a small, inadequate counterbalance to the long neck at the other end of her body.
• She never slept with the side of her face to the ground like a pony. I supposed that this was because the large eyes in their prominent sockets were vulnerable... When asleep, she never completely closed her eyes. The thick lashes covered most of the eye-ball but there was always a lustrous, unseeing fragment unveiled.
• We usually let her indoors, but we were resigned to having scratched windows. From inside it looked most odd to see a llama with its lips squashed against the glass, cleaning its teeth. Also we thought the scribble of lines made an interesting and permanent llama memorial.
• Brenda and Helen were staying at Gwylfa for the summer and, on most days, they would come up to Carneddi for tea. Brenda would bring a jerry can of pure Water Authority water with her. All of a sudden, water had become a precious gift. <> Water transport, syphoning to the washing machine and watering the garden and greenhouse occupied a good deal of time.
• A well-trained dog always seems more confident, secure and happy than one which lives according to its own impulses. I think most domestic animals quickly learn and enjoy a routine and if the routine includes a few tricks, the animal probably enjoys that, too. It is when an animal looks stressed during a performance or is asked to act against its nature that the doubts begin to creep in.
• For a moment I was winded. The llama had come up while I was looking round and had played Ñusta’s jumping game on me... It had just done what llamas sometimes do, and it had made a fool of me. I dusted myself down and tried to look like a mature animal-lover, to whom nothing had happened. I gave the llama another Polo to show that there was no ill-feeling.
• The llama, however, is on heat for weeks at a time and ovulates only after it has been mated. Cats, rabbits, ferrets and mink have the same breeding pattern. Female llamas may reject the males by running and spitting but, if the female is receptive, the courtship lasts for only a few minutes.
• * The nest was the most beautiful I have ever seen. It was made of dark green moss and a little sheep’s wool with flakes of light greyish-green lichen round the sides, giving it almost the appearance of a jewel-studded crown. Three or four gingery-coloured feathers, dropped from the breasts of our hens, were woven into the upper edge of the nest in an upright position, their natural curve forming part of a little feathery roof over it. The lining contained a few black hairs, perhaps from the cattle or the ponies but the main filling, deep, soft and luxurious, was beige llama fur. This chaffinch, I thought, must be an expert in design and a devoted mother to have provided its eggs with the most expensive kind of wall-to-wall carpeting. This seemed the last word in modern furnishing. Now the nest made an exquisite ornament on the mantelshelf at Carneddi; it was too lovely to discard.
• Unfortunately the pair were rather awkwardly close to the wall but the male seemed to be managing. The children squeezed out of the doorway into the rain for a better view. Now we heard the strange ‘singing’ of the male llama at mating time, a harsh continuous umming which never stopped throughout the procedure. This lasted for about forty minutes. Wall-eye’s fervour did not abate during this time. His neck was stiffly arched, his ears forward and there was a glazed look in his pale eyes. He ummed with such a feverish intensity that he was soon frothing at the mouth. Ñusta, on the other hand, seemed strangely detached. She was down in her favourite tea-cosy position, ears forward and a sweet expression on her pretty face. She looked about her with interest, seemingly unaware of the stormy behaviour of the male on top of her.
• Now we had Ann and John, children of the mountains, who could ride and run and swim in open spaces, who could eat food grown from our own soil and enjoy a childhood which was not too much debased by technology. This is what Paul and I had worked for. This is what we enjoyed. This was the hard-working, austere but soul-rewarding life of a hill farm. And then, like a catalyst or a touch of magic, the llama came along.