Where, oh where, was the video camera today?
I had agreed to sell two mature female llamas so decided to catch them and load them in my own trailer today. That way it would only take a few minutes to switch them into the other fellow's trailer for the long haul back to his place.
Silly ol' me thinks I can handle this all by myself. Getting them in the pen was no problem. Getting them into the trailer was a completely different story. After about 15 minutes one decided to explore this new thing (trailer) so I quickly shut her in the front half. Llama number two would have been waving her middle finger at me if she would have had one to wave. Thirty minutes later I give up. Call my wife for help. Whenever she has anything to do with the llamas, which is rare, I call her the Llama Mama. She grew up riding horses, working and feeding cattle and milking dairy cows. Upon arrival I told her there was a lariat in the pickup that we could use to "persuade" llama number two. She threaded the rope around the trailer gate and into the main part of the trailer and made her dally. I dropped the loop over Mrs. Snotbritches' head and we were having fun. Four hundred pounds of upset llama is rough on even a big ol' boy like me, but, every time she moved an inch closer to being in the trailer, Llama Mama took up the slack in an instant. Within a couple of minutes we had her solid against the rear of the deck with her head up but everything else straight down on the ground to make her center of gravity as low as possible. The deck is about 18 inches off the ground, so I had my work cut out for me. That short little tail doesn't really make a very good handle compared to a cow's tail. But, with the loop around her hairy neck, she had some incentive to raise up. Fortunately, I managed to roll her into the trailer before I keeled over. Shutting the tail gate always comes with a huge wave of satisfaction. But, then I had to open the slide gate to crawl inside with her and get the loop over her head. I'm pretty sure she grew a middle finger about that point in time.
