I did have a question about a month ago that puzzled me for a while. My phone rang, I answered and it was someone who'd gotten my number from an ad. This lady asked me how many llamas I had and when I told her that I had about 30 she then ask me did I have any who were old enough to lay eggs yet! At this point I suggested that perhaps she had intended to call an Emu farm because as far as I knew llamas didn't lay eggs, at whatever age!

One of my favorite stories occurred in 1986 where I was exhibiting a pair of female llamas at the South Carolina State Fair in Columbia, South Carolina. This pair, a mother and daughter, just happened to have pretty much identical colors and markings. By the point in time where the following occurred I was pretty much reduced to a burned out information booth keeper. It was late in the evening, and we had been 'on exhibit' for almost two weeks. A young woman, obviously a student at SCU (South Carolina University) was walking by carrying an arm full of intimidating scholarly books. Just as I looked up, she turned to look at the llamas. Next thing I knew she threw her books into the air and started screaming! Then she simply stood, pointed at the llamas and stuttered. She stammered that she had thought they made that up for the movie, that she didn't know that was a real animal!! By this time I was standing by her and one glance at the llamas made everything clear. They were lying kushed, head to tail and being the same color and sort of the same size and so on! Have you gotten the picture yet? About this time the llamas, getting a bit apprehensive oven all the commotion, jumped up to have a better view of what was going on. At that point the illusion was shattered and the poor girl was able to return to the real world, secure in the knowledge that the fabled PUSHMI-PULLYU exists only in books and movies!

A few years later I took two of my llamas to participate in an Azalea Festival parade. They were a big hit, as llamas usually are and after the event I was standing around chatting and giving people a chance to take pictures with the llamas. A perfectly normal (to all appearances) woman with a couple of small children walked up to me and asked me, with a straight face, how old llamas had to be before they started talking! This question was strange enough to reduce my usually non-stop mouth to an open silence! I thought for a minute and answered her in the only way I could, I told her that I didn't know because none of mine were that old yet! So if anyone out there knows, please drop me a line and let me know, I'm still wondering!

The next year we volunteered to be in a Christmas Parade. We had already done quite a few parades with ordinary llamas so we decided to think up something special just for Christmas. What we came up with was a Christmas reindeer, not, of course a really truly reindeer but a cute make believe llama reindeer. What a costume I created. Several old halters were taken apart and re-assembled creatively along with several lengths of gray foam pipe insulation. This insulation was shaped, after superheating in boiling water, into wildly extravagant antlers, which were attached to the modified halter. As if this wasn't silly enough I then hung Christmas bells off the ends of the 'antlers.' This really silly contraption was then put on the head of a large brown and white paint llama with a marvelous sense of humor and a great disposition. The result was a wonder to behold!

Fancy Pants (for that was the 'Reindeer's' name) walked up and got in line for the parade looking a lot like a 3-D cartoon. She was in the spirit of the season with bells tinkling as she walked and a big red bow around her neck. The band started to play and the parade began. We stood in hushed silence and awaited out cue to start down the street. The weather was nippy as the wind began to bluster and cottony clouds padded the winter sky. As I received the signal and started off in a trot with my Christmas llama, a great burly policeman dashed out of the crowd and held his hand up signaling me to STOP! "Sorry Ma'am, can't have a dangerous animal like that in a children's parade, it might go wild and just think of the damage it could do with them horns!!!" Fancy Pants just looked at him, shook her "horns" and gave a quiet little llama giggle. He probably didn't hear it for all the noise those Christmas bells on the ends on her 'antlers' were making!