October 13, 2008

I Don’t Know Nothing About Birthing No Alpacas

Last week I wrote about joining my cousin and her husband on a quest to buy a male alpaca. After discovering that the alpaca equivalent of kicking the tires is to give your prospect’s testicles a good squeeze, I have decided that the universal maxim of alpaca shopping should be something like:

No ifs, ands or buts, the proof is in the nuts.

Or,

He’ll be a delight if the cojones are right.

Or,

Don’t take him back to your shack, if you don’t like the sack.

Or . . . well, I could keep this up pretty much indefinitely, but I think you get the picture. Feel free to come up with your own original ATA (Alpaca Testicle Aphorism) and send it along to me.

The other striking thing that happened during our brief sojourn at the ranch was the birth of a baby alpaca named Acacia. She was born to a mom whose short, stubby legs earned her a nickname, an affectionate reference to Eddie Murphy’s character in Shrek – “Donkey.”

Now in general, the life of an alpaca does not really shape up to be all that stimulating, even as farm animals go. They pretty much just wander around the barn yard, occasionally yanking a mouthful of grass out of the ground, then standing there, chewing slowly and thoughtfully. Since alpacas are not really known to be intellectual giants, I’m guessing that those thoughts are focused on the next mouthful of grass.

So you would think that the birth of a new baby would be a pretty electrifying event around the old alpaca pen. Something that would really break up the monotony.

Not so. While we did not witness the actual moment of birth, we were on the scene within a couple of minutes, and the pasture was almost unnaturally tranquil. My sense is that, at most, Donkey might have been startled into pausing for about one grass munch by the thump of her baby plopping to the earth behind her.

At about three minutes of age Acacia was standing up and trying, with mixed success, to walk. Donkey was standing calmly some distance away, poking at a particularly succulent-looking tuft of grass with her nose.

After we humans shook things up a bit, toweling off the still-wet newborn, weighing her, ooh-ing and ahh-ing and pointing out that her gangly legs were already longer than her mother’s, most of the other alpacas began to take notice of the new arrival.

One by one they would come over and give Acacia’s head a sort of “welcome to the pen” sniff. Each time, the baby would look up and ask clearly (if you happen speak alpaca), “Are you my mother?” Of course, she also asked the same question of each of the humans, the resident attack llama, a riding lawn mower, and an ancient Rhodesian Ridgeback dog named Rex.

About the only one she didn’t ask was Donkey, who really didn’t seem all that affected by the whole situation, one way or the other.

A little while later I held Acacia in my arms for a photo op while she tried to nurse on my ear, and I found myself thinking back to the day my son was born. After gazing into his oddly familiar face and assuring him that no, I was not his mother, I spent the rest of the afternoon strutting around town wearing an “It’s A Boy” button and shoving bubble gum cigars and handfuls of baby pictures into the hands of everyone who was not quick-witted enough to outrun me.

Anybody want to see some baby alpaca pictures?

Copyright ©2008 Michael Ball. Distributed exclusively by North Star Writers Group.

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