As with humans, so with llamas.
Babies don’t stay babies for long, and (even though the experience at the time feels otherwise) teenagers don’t stay teenagers for long.
Capucine is growing rapidly and developing her very own personality along the way. She is still incredibly fluffy and endearing in her bounciness, but she is now eating hay, grass and small trees, and drinking water from the bucket, just like a proper grown-up. Of course, she is still drinking Mum’s milk whenever she wants, but she spends increasingly less time hanging around her.
Her favourite companions at the moment are Ana, who is still childish enough to join in with Capucine’s silly games, and Pedro, who is an irresistible target for much of Capucine’s more physical behaviour. She loves to jump on him, and barge him (often when the poor guy is trying to concentrate on eating his daily portion of concentrate food), and generally get under his feet. For a big, macho stud, he is surprisingly tolerant of Capucine’s antics.
Whilst we cannot help but feel a little sad at the loss of Capucine’s babyhood, the sadness is offset by fact that she is becoming more interesting as she gets older. It’s a funny thing, but now, when we look her in the eye, it feels much more as if there is ‘somebody home’ – as if there is something going on inside her head. Already the time has come for her to start school, and begin the long, slow process of training that will hopefully shape her into an approachable, amenable llama who will let us halter her, groom her coat and touch her feet.
Ana meanwhile has reached that difficult stage that all sensible parents dread. Adolescence! Yes she likes to run around playing ‘let’s pretend we’re being chased by a puma’, with Capucine. But she also likes to put on her make-up and prance around in high heels in front of Pedro. Whilst this is all perfectly normal, and only to be expected, we have noticed lately that Pedro actually seems to be taking more than just a paternal interest in this behaviour of hers. He is becoming quite possessive of her, and gets pretty stroppy when she shares her affectionate attentions with anyone other than him. So whenever we spend a lot of time with her, stroking her neck, and generally taking advantage of the fact that she is such an amazingly friendly and trusting llama, he responds with a bit of bargey posturing, and dominance-reinforcing behaviour. At present, luckily for us, such behaviour is aimed only at Ana, and in response she duly tucks her tail submissively over her back, and say’s sorry. Not quite a proper teenager yet, I guess.
More worryingly though, Pedro is showing increasing interest in Ana’s rear end. She will insist on parading it around under his nose of course, and with Fatma and Elif both being ‘unavailable’ to him, (and giving him a hard time, as pregnant women do!), you can’t blame the poor lad for checking out the possibilities. But there is a real chance that she could become fertile within the next month or so, and we really, really don’t want a teenage pregnancy on our hands. So, having put off the day for as long as we sensibly could, the time has finally come for Ana to leave home, and take up residence in Duc and Valentine’s batchelor pad.
With this end in mind we have cleverly trained Ana to accept having a halter put on her. So cleverly trained in fact that, in contrast to all the shenanigans that are necessary to get a halter on (or indeed off) any of the other llamas, we can simply walk up to her in the field and put it on her. I’d love to think this is the successful result of my careful training with the halter-in-the-food-bucket method, but I suspect that she’s just a very Easy llama (in all senses of the word!).
Of course, none of the halters we have were small enough for her elegantly narrow head, and the first two occasions of halter-application resulted in her sliding it off her head and down her neck, during her frequent sticking-the-neck-through-the-fence antics when grazing on the out-of-reach yummy grass. So, with some sharp scissors and a piece of hot wire, I modified the halter and, third time lucky, she is now the proud owner and wearer of the customized halter that will hopefully enable us to walk her sedately (ha) over to the Rough Land, on the day of our choosing.
Capucine seems to think Ana’s halter has been put there for her playful benefit, and she likes to get hold of bits of it to chew. She will certainly miss Ana when she leaves home. But, hopefully, in only a couple of month’s time, she will have a young sibling to play with, and she will take her turn at being older sister for a change.
Meanwhile, Pedro will just have to put up with his lot as the hen-pecked male, subject to Elif’s stroppy looks and Fatma’s snorts, which effectively keep him away from any food (or anything at all) until they say it’s alright for him to get a look-in.
No prospect of a shag until after Elif offloads her baby in August (gosh – we can’t wait to see him trying to mate with aloof Elif, Queen of the Castle and Mistress of Acrimony), and no chance of exploring the nubile possibilities of Ana, until she returns from the Rough Land Finishing School late next year.
