Saturday morning May 17th, 2003, Jeff and I went to pick up three rescues on Orcas Island (as a sidenote HOLY smokes is the ferry expensive $116.00 to go over with a two horse trailer). ANYHOW, back to the story. I had been contacted by the son of the lady that had Eagle's (my male) mom. She had died of Cancer in February and her son didn't know what to do with the llamas. I immediately agreed to take Eagle's mom and it was decided that I would find homes for the other four. The son called me eventually and said that his stepfather wanted to keep Eagle's half sister and a gelding.

When we headed over we were going to get two geldings and "Aster" Eagle's mother. I had told the son that I wanted to shear the remaining two for them as I knew they didn't know how to do it. So we got over there at 10a.m., rounded up the group and began to halter them etc. I sheared the two matted llamas and while I was shearing I realized that the other two llamas we were taking were both females, NOT geldings. When we first arrived I thought to myself, hmmmm that brown llama looks an awful lot like a "George" llama. George for those of you that don't know, is a wonderful older man here in the Whatcom County area that bred for guard hair and classic type llamas. My female Mira and Wendy Cummins light wool girl Summer came from him too. Everyone adores him whether they are a llama or human. George is hard of hearing, and is the most magical individual with his llamas. This particular llama was the spitting image of Georges original llama that died at the age of 28? a couple of years ago and he called her "Mama Llama" (registered name was Juliette).

So while shearing, I realized that we were in fact taking two females, not two geldings AND they kept calling the one female Willow. As I sat there shearing, I remembered (see my sick bloodline fantasies pay off) a female named "OM Willow Tree" that had come from George. "Willow" was in fact the mother of Wendy's "OM Summer" and grandmother to Ron and Tina Jones female "Autumn Fires." As a sidenote, Autumn came from Jim and Marilynn Larson originally. Both her daughter and grandaughter have been big winners at the shows. Willow was very sweet and easy to deal with the whole time we were working with the three girls. She did however have some very unusual teeth as one goes down and the other two are where they should be.

We loaded up the three girls (I still don't know who the third one is, but am working on that) and got back in the ferry line at 12:30p.m. Caught the 1:50p.m. ferry and were on our way home. We made a phone call and a friend looked up her age and we realized she was 19 years old and had nine offspring! We got to Wendy's (to surprise her) at about 5:00p.m. and I said to Wendy, "I have a good story for you." She immediately said, "OH NO they weren't geldings they were intact?" NOPE! "The females were bred?" NOPE! Jeff had unloaded Willow and I told Wendy that she was Summer's mom. At which point Wendy immediately said she would take her. Jeff and I had already decided that we were going to offer her to George before anyone else got her, but Wendy and Bill fell in love with her immediately, she was such a good girl.

We left Wendy and Bill's and then headed for Georges. We called George to tell him that we wanted to show him a llama and as I always just drop in randomly with llamas, he didn't think anything of it. When we got to Georges, he came out of the house and we unloaded Willow. We unloaded Willow and walked her up to George. At that point we said "George do you recognize this llama?" He looked and said "hummm well, hmmmm she looks like, she looks like Wil, Willow Tree." At this point I said, "George It is Willow Tree." His face lite up and a big grin crossed his face. Willow was quite happy to see George and was leaning into him as he inspected her (see picture). So George pulled me aside and said "You are quite handy with the trailer. If I paid for it, would you take her to Kulshan (our vet) to have Mike and Gordon look her over and see if she is okay and check out her teeth?" Of course I said yes and I told George I would make an appointment to take he and Willow to the vet. George then looked at me and said, "GOOD she can stay here." He then took her to his pasture and turned her out with his other old llama and she quietly walked down to the far end of his pasture and began to graze. George kept telling us stories of Willow when she was young/born (he hadn't seen her since she was 4-5) and about how she loved that same spot that she had just gone down to.

So the best part is this is a rescue with an AWESOME ending, she is home where she was born (reminds me of the story Black Beauty), what were the chances that someone would pick her up and know not only who she was, but where she came from and lastly, George got another one of his elderly but loved llamas back (Willow's half brother died last year at 27... and he was returned to George also).