Sad news

So here we are at last. At home in Roquetaillade.

The first day of our journey through France was thankfully uneventful. However, the events of the second day reminded us what a roller-coaster of a ride this thing called Life is.

About three hours into our journey from Orleans we received a phone call from Sue (the llama-selling lady). “Hello, Val? I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news. Some really bad news. Emine is dead.”

Emine was one of the two pregnant females we had bought, and was the mother of the 8 month old Anastasia, who we had also bought, and who had not yet been fully weaned. A definite “Oh My God!” moment.

Sue went on to explain that they had returned from a shopping trip to find that Emine had somehow got her head stuck in the hay-feeder, in the barn, where all our llamas had been put ready for loading on to the trailer the next morning. They thought that maybe Albert, their huge Clydesdale stud horse, who was in the barn on the other side of the feeder, may have nudged it when Emine was eating, so she couldn’t get out, and that as she struggled to free herself she got weak, and then suffocated as the weight of her body pulled her down.

Of course poor Mike and Sue kept going over and over it. They couldn’t understand what had happened, and felt that it could have been avoided if they’d done something differently. When they found her, little Anastasia was still trying to suckle from her dead mother. Although it was of course upsetting for us, our sadness could in no way compare to theirs. After all, we had only seen Emine for a little while on our last visit to their farm, whilst they had lived with her for years, and seen all her babies born and weaned.

Despite their huge loss, Mike and Sue were keen to agree with us a ‘replacement’, suggesting that we could have one of the other pregnant females, or perhaps a couple more male llamas for trekking. They needed to know within the next couple of hours, as Mike would need to catch the llama(s) we wanted, to make sure they were in the barn ready for loading into the trailer at first light, for the trip to us.

It was at this point that the direction of our future in llama activities became clear. Whilst I would dearly have loved to have had Felix (a young male we had met whilst doing our training at Mike and Sue’s, and who I could imagine training into a really good and friendly trekker), and Diablo (the old grandfather figure who has ‘looked after’ Felix since he was weaned last year), there was suddenly no doubt in our minds that breeding rather than trekking is what we really want to do.

We had chosen Fatma and Emine from all the available pregnant females, as they were both pregnant by Mike and Sue’s stud male Yoda, which meant that, should either or both of their offspring be female, they could eventually be mated with Pedro - the stud male we had bought. However all the other females were pregnant by Pedro, so any female born to one of those could not be mated with Pedro (their father) without leading to possible genetic defects caused by inbreeding. Deciding to take one of these in place of Emine would therefore mean that we would need to look at getting ourselves another stud male in future, and splitting the herd (which of course means we would need to get more llamas to make each group a reasonable size, so they can be happy and not lonely).

Well, here we were with three days successful llama training under our belt, a good new trailer ready for transporting llamas here, there, and everywhere, and a newly discovered interest in the long term possibilities of breeding and selling well-bred, pedigree llamas. It didn’t take long to reach a decision, and within half an hour I rang Sue to say that, if it was ok with them, we would like to take Elif in place of Emine. We also checked whether Anastasia would still be able to come, or whether the trauma of her mother’s death, and the sudden enforced weaning, would cause an issue. Sue assured me that she would be fine, so we agreed that we’d call again when we arrived home just to confirm arrangements for tomorrow.

Death is a strange thing. Life is even stranger. There may not be a purpose to any of it, but I’m sure there is a meaning.