Ted's Diary
written by Amen Ra (Ted) The Alpaca of Distinction

12th March 2007. Its ME again. Well, you would never believe it, but we have had several days in a row without any RAIN!

The paddocks have dried out, the mud is not quite so gloopy, and the sun is warm on our fleecy backs – it's SPRING-TIME! Well, at the moment anyway, so I say “Let’s make hay while the sun shines”. (Actually what I said was "Let's make LOTS MORE hay while the sun shines", but the BOSS edited that bit.)

Speaking of which - to help me on my diet that cunning Other Half has moved my hay rack to face into the girl’s day-time paddock, so me and my pal Barnaby have to pull a few wisps from the back of the rack, – exercise and dieting all at once – (and intelligence, - it was MY idea to pull it through the fence, and as Barnaby is always hungry he didn’t take long to figure it out either once I showed him how easy it was.  If you pull hard enough you can drag a whole lot through the bars)

As always there is a down side to good weather here in Devon.  It seems that we are all due yet another injection and it is nail trimming AGAIN!  I don’t think our nails grow THAT quickly, its just an excuse for the BOSS to give us all a kiss and a cuddle. The BOSS got the feed bucket and an ample supply of supplement and tried to persuade the ladies and Chris to come into the catch-pen.  It seems they are not so easily fooled!  Calling, blowing kisses, shaking buckets, waving arms – no way were those girls going into the pen!  Finally BOSS stomps off and leaves Other Half sitting on the fence chatting to Alex whilst she goes to find the Blue Bag. Oh, that will make them want to come in to the catch pen – I don’t think!

Funny thing about women, they are very unpredictable and change their minds a lot, have you noticed?  Well, alpaca females are no different it seems! As soon as BOSS’s back was turned they all trooped in to the catch pen without any encouragement – Other Half gently closed the gate - and Hey Presto! Girls ready for nail trimming, - easy or what?  They won't catch ME that easily, just watch!

With six females and little Chris in the catch pen there was not much room to move, let alone run about, so each one was caught and very quickly nails were being trimmed – and big surprise – jabbed in the rear! No one seemed to mind until it came to Charm! Of course she has to be different – lying down seemed to be her choice of position to have her toenails cut, and despite a lot of leg waving – fun for us boys, I can tell you – she took the jab well and stood up as if nothing had happened. 

Now, our little Chris had other ideas! By this time all the adult females had been let out into the main field – mistake number one!  There was now plenty of room for Chris to dash around and be silly, even Charm looked at him as if he was daft! It is surprising how fast a seven month old cria can run.

Other Half finally made a lunge for him and grabbed a handful of fleece – mistake number two! - Chris may have been captured but did he stop moving? NO! He struggled, spun like helicopter, kicked and wriggled – then suddenly caught sight of his mother, Betsy, glaring at him over the fence. Scary or what!
(She scares me! - Ed)

He stood very still for few minutes while BOSS checked his toes and found only one to be clipped – all that fuss for nothing, silly boy, and he didn’t even notice the injection as he was too busy whispering to Charm who had come over to give him support in his hour (or minute in his case) of need – Ah well, fortunately by this time it was getting late, and BOSS decided to leave us boys to another day – unfortunately no extra supplement, but then no kisses or jabs either.

Bye for now, speak to you all soon, your happy friend, Ted.

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