Les Lamas de l'Aubaine

A few days have passed since the Bad Day.

The hurdle of obtaining hay has been surmounted, (Remotely Interesting Fact: thirty two bales fit in our horse trailer, and weigh around a ton). The guttering has been installed on the field shelter, so the rain water collects in the llamas drinking bucket. Neat. The vegetable garden is taking shape – tomatoes, lettuces, courgettes and leeks in the ground; tomato, red pepper and basil seeds in pots. Despite all the Fuss and Bother of last Wednesday, no mating has yet taken place in llama land. As far as we know.

April continues to shower. Warm and sunny one minute. Heavy rain the next. The field is muddy. The track up to the top gate is muddier. The drive up it in the land rover is scary. More adrenalin bursts, as the road tyres get slick with mud and the only possible movement is a sideways slide towards the edge of a wooded precipice. Eventually back on the safety of the rutted tarmac, we laugh at the muddy trails we leave in the road, just like Real Farmers (and contemplate, with a guilty shudder, the possible consequences for unsuspecting bikers).

We take the dog for a walk, and have a good look at the next bit of rough land we intend to fence. It’s steep in many places and brim-full of prickly stuff. While I stand in a ‘clearing’ of Very Long Grass, Simon ventures off to explore the possible boundaries, leaving me alone in the silence. Strange, low grunting noises from close-by make me jump, and send Max the Lionheart whimpering to my side. The sun is hot, the sky a beautiful expanse of rolling silver and grey clouds bundling around in patches of blue. The joy of yet another moment in a magic place is only slightly marred by the fear of whatever tusked creature might come rushing out of the undergrowth at any second.

There is no easy access to the land – the most obvious way-in being across a field of wheat. Simon cheerfully comments that it will be easy to clear a line around the edges for erecting a fence. I consider the work involved and question his use of the term ‘easy’. I guess it’s all relative. The prospect of carrying fence posts from the nearest driveable point to the highest part of the land makes me feel tired. The thought of removing metres and metres of blackthorn makes me feel sore. The thought of paying someone else to do all the work makes its way into my head. But we can’t afford it and anyway it probably couldn’t be done quickly enough. Plus we’d have to have some more of those dreaded French phone conversations to arrange it.

We walk back home via the llama field and Duc and Valentine sniff at Max through the gate. Nobody runs away. As we head back down towards the village, the clouds empty. Max and Simon both make it home wet, and I straggle in behind utterly drenched. It seems hard to believe that in a couple of months all the land around here will be rock hard and bone dry, when the summer drought kicks in.

This is a strange life. Just when you think you’ve got it sussed, fate steps in to wipe that smug smile off your face.

Wednesday morning dawned sunny and clear. A good day for our first llama walk we thought. Having created a marvellous contraption for enclosing individual llamas in a small space, so as to make haltering easier (nay – even possible!), we thought we’d try out its effectiveness.

Things went quite well to start with. Between Simon and myself, a long piece of rope, and a big piece of wood (designed to be a kitchen unit worktop, but adapted by us cheapskates to become a sort of gate) we managed to persuade Duc into the small space, where he kindly stood calmly while Simon put on his halter and lead. Next up – Valentine. Well, he’d twigged as to what was going on, and was not quite so easy to catch, but still I found myself in a small space with him, and easily got his halter on. Piece of cake. Until I tried to attach the lead to it.

Maybe he didn’t like the colour we’d chosen for his lead (pastel shades for the girls, bold primaries for the boys – bright red for Valentine). Maybe he didn’t feel like a walk. Whatever the reason, he decided to test our catch-pen enclosure design at its most obvious weak point, putting his head underneath the ‘gate’ and spectacularly lifting it off its hinges. Yeah, well, I’d actually seen that one coming in my imagination as we were constructing it, but Simon, ever the optimist, had thought they’d be unlikely to try it.

So, Valentine, all shaken up (and a little bit pleased with himself, no doubt) was not in the least bit inclined to let me attach a lead to him, and we decided just to take out Duc for a short wander on his own. Which he seemed to enjoy, particularly since he managed to get his gob round some lush, sweet grass – a rare commodity in his over-grazed field.

On our return, Simon went ahead to open the gate, and Duc took the opportunity to try to pull my arm out of its shoulder socket. I think he was trying to get away, back to the lovely grass, but I had learned my llama-walking lessons well, and with a very from grip on the lead, there was no way I was gonna let go, and, triumphant at last, I led him back into the field. However, with hindsight, I wonder now if Duc had a premonition about what was about to happen next.

And what happened next was not a pretty sight.

The moment Duc got back into the field, Pedro, our ‘stud’ male, who up until this point had been a bit of a gentle (if aloof) giant, went on the attack. Head down, biting Duc’s legs; head up, spitting and neck-wrestling Duc to the ground; all the while making the most amazingly unattractive noises. This was a Pedro we had never seen before and suddenly his huge size and weight became overtly apparent. All I could do was stand transfixed in horror, calling to Duc to run away and come back to the catch pen. But would he submit? Would he hell! He was not behaving as a gelded male should. He was behaving like a sex-crazed football supporter after 10 pints of Best. Strutting, and posing and spitting and hanging around Fatma (the obvious cause of it all – on heat again, following the birth of her baby). He was getting a hammering, but he just couldn’t back down.

Eventually, god only knows how, we managed to steer the rumbling herd (yes they were all in there somehow, as if the girls were trying to break it up or something) towards the catch pen, and Duc, briefly distracted by the attraction of his other great love (food) ran in through the gate, with enough of a space between him and Pedro for us to slam it shut and break them up. Peace did not return though.

Duc tested out our fencing and gate construction, trying to jump over the gate, and when that failed, trying to push his way through the fencing. For once, we felt justified in having done such an OTT job on the fencing. It held, and Duc resorted to anxious pacing along the fence line, posing and snorting, and making a sort of “you’re lucky I can’t get over this fence” sound to Pedro.

After examining the blood on Duc’s legs, and deciding the wounds were probably superficial, we stood (shaking) at the fence between the rivals and contemplated What the Bloody Hell to Do Now? Fencing the other bit of rough land would take days. Keeping Duc in the small catch-pen on his own seemed an unlikely option – he was SO uptight, I thought he might explode or have a heart attack or something. The only possible solution was to split the field and make a new (very strong) fence down the middle.

Luckily we still had some fence posts and some wire netting left over from our earlier work, and Simon set to, banging in fence posts (with a speed and strength I had never thought possible – it’s amazing how useful adrenalin can be sometimes) while I stayed (very nervously) in the catch pen with Duc, trying to calm him down, and discourage him from trying to get out – his hot, snorting breath in my face suddenly seeming more scary than endearing.

“OK. Ok… It’s all under control. We have a plan. We have the necessary materials and know-how. It’ll all be fine.” Simon heads back to the house to man-handle the evil, heavy roll of wire into the land rover to bring up to the field. I stay between Duc and Pedro, to keep Pedro away from the catch-pen fence, literally out of spitting distance.

But then…Oh bloody crap! Pedro is attacking Valentine! Poor, sweet, submissive Valentine is getting the macho treatment, and even though he is kushing with his tail up over his back in an obvious, “You win, mate!” pose, Pedro is not leaving him alone. Much screaming – some of it Pedro’s, some of it Valentine’s, most of it mine. Visions of carnage. Visions of trampled llama babies, and lifeless, bloodied llama corpses. “Come on Valentine! Run for it! This way!”

Simon, fresh from his restful 15 minutes humping a massive roll of heavy wire uphill, plunges into the mayhem. Shouting manfully, with much arm-waving and probably unconsidered bravado, Simon approaches the fray as if it were a dog-fight – intent on establishing his position as the Alpha male. My visions of carnage expand to include lifeless, bloodied husband bodies, while my brain whirrs wildly searching for the French words to explain to the Emergency Services (Damn, what IS the French Emergency Number???) that my husband has been attacked by a rampant llama stud.

Amazingly, it works. Valentine, sensing impending mortality, stampedes down the hill, in my general direction, with Pedro in hot pursuit, and the rest of the gang close behind. Before he has the chance to veer off in an unhelpful direction, Simon grabs his halter and hurtles towards the catch pen. With my body between Duc and the drama in front of me, I get the gate open just wide enough for Simon to shove Valentine through the gap. Then Simon, expanding to the proportions of a Super Hero, turns to face-off Pedro, while Valentine, bloody and panting, collapses into a kushed position in front of the hay, and starts chomping. Comfort eating, I think.

What a day! What a life! Simon returns to join us in the sanctuary of the catch pen, and asks casually if I’m still happy that we’re following this dream. A moment’s consideration. “Would you rather be dealing with this, or asbestos in a primary school?” I retort. Discussion over, we wipe the sweat from our collective brow, and return to the Task In Hand.

Duc is a little happier now that he has a buddy with him in the pen. Valentine is a little happier that he is still alive. Pedro is a little happier that he has all the women and most of the field to himself. Fatma is chewing grass and pretending it is all nothing at all to do with her.

The rest of the day (which I think must have been nice and sunny as we both got sun burnt faces) passes in the concentrated effort of constructing a separating fence, whilst monitoring Pedro’s whereabouts, and trying to be polite to the endless stream of naïve passers-by who come to look at the lovely llamas and ask inane questions. In French.

When the fence is finished (no way through – it’s a good job we made two entrances, one at each end of the field) we review the situation. Duc and Valentine have been penned up all day, and Duc has been pacing the boundary endlessly, looking for a way out. We decide it is safe to let them into their newly enclosed third of the field. Out they come.

But Valentine is limping, and as he puts weight on his front, left foot, it oozes blood from a nasty hole on the outside. Wish we had some antiseptic. Wish we had any idea at all what to do. We decide in the end that Valentine should be kept in a small space to stop him walking about, and he seems happy to come back into the pen and lie down. But we don’t want to leave him alone, and we’re not convinced that Pedro and Duc won’t have a go at each other over or through our new fence, so Duc has to come back into the pen for the night as well.

As it gets dark, we return to the house suffering the after effects of adrenalin overdoses, tension and sheer hard work. Am I still glad we pursued this dream? Ask me in the morning.