Alpacaland Drama - Another Escapee? What is going on!?!?!?!

So I walk outside the house this morning, and start over toward the chook pen, where I am going to feed the chooks (hens, chickens, whatever you want to call them) and collect their eggs. I look up, and there’s a big white hen standing there, staring at me.
What?? How did you get out??!!??

I look up at the gate and there it is, closed, just as I left it yesterday.

How on earth do you catch a chook? I have mentioned that I am a suburbanite, not a farm girl, right? And I have mentioned that I am by myself, right? So my mind starts whirring, as I envision myself making a grab then ending up in a nasty tangle of feathers, hair, squawks, screams and fingernails. Nope, that won’t work. So I carry on walking toward the gate, and miraculously, she starts to follow me. But then all her friends inside the gate start looking at us too. The last thing I want is to open the gate, only for her friends to run out, instead of her running in. So I open the gate and throw some food at the chooks on the inside, trying to distract them. Then I look at the hen and tell her to come on. Like she understands human-speak. But she does come a little closer. Then she turns around. Bugger. I open the gate a little wider, and the friends on the inside have a look at it, contemplating their big break-out, but thankfully become more engrossed at the food I’ve just thrown them. The chook comes closer again as I open the gate a little bit wider to let her in. But nope, she turns around again. Thankfully, there appears Key, one of the dogs, to block her way out toward freedom. Excellent. The chook chose wisely and chose the gate over the dog, so now she is safely back inside pecking on some feed and hopefully contemplating the idea of laying an egg.

But how did she get out? I walked around the entire pen (it’s pretty big) and saw no holes in the wire. There was a decent storm last night, so maybe a big gust of wind magically lifted her up and over the fence. Okay, not likely, so again, another mystery.

Then, to make things more interesting, I go on to feed the horses (there are two living in a paddock close to the house, an injured foal and his mommy). They are kind of big, and to be honest I am a tiny bit apprehensive about them, but I am coping. But they’ve just been given a bit more room to move around, so now I have to walk through their paddock to get to the girl alpacas. Easy enough, just throw some food at them to distract them (this seems to be a theme). So after said feeding, as I get close to the girl alpaca paddock, they come running over, but I see one of them on the other side of the fence! What?!?!? The paddocks are linked together with gates like a jigsaw puzzle, rather than a grid, so she’s not with me, and she’s not with the others, but she is in a big paddock that adjoins the house with an open gate on the other side (open, because there are not supposed to be any animals in that paddock). Granted, it is a quite long walk to get to said open gate, but it is open nonetheless, and I am not about to try to chase an alpaca down the road if she were to get through and down the driveway.
And how on earth did she get from there to here?

Again, I walked the fence between the two paddocks and there are no breaks in the fence, no bits where it’s lowered to the ground. There is one of those cattle gates on the far side, but I almost have to turn sideways to fit through it, so there is no way the alpaca could have fit through. And even if a giant gust of wind did pick up the chook (riiiight), it definitely would not have picked up the alpaca. So how did she get there? More importantly, how am I going to get her back?

Thankfully, alpacas like to stay with their friends, so even though the fence separated them and she had the most perplexed and unhappy look on her face, she stayed with them while I went to get a headstall and some food so I could lure and catch her. Thankfully alpacas are relatively easy to catch, and she was already conveniently standing near the corner where two paddocks met. I just had to corner her, wrap my arm around her neck (like saying hello to an old Army buddy) and then somehow get the headstall over her head. That was the trickiest part. Since I’ve only put a headstall on once or twice, I think it was a bit crooked, but it did the job. That enabled me to lead her behind me so she couldn’t run away – a bit like walking a very very big dog, but behind instead of in front of you. So I led her away from her friends (that was the hard part, she really didn’t want to follow me) toward the gate into another paddock. Then I had to get her through that gate, and close the gate behind us (because the two horses were in that paddock, but I had distracted them with a bucket of food). And then I had to walk her back toward her friends, which she did much more willingly, and then get her through that gate without any of the other alpacas trying to make a run for it (sound familiar, I feel like I just did this with the chooks). Somehow, it all worked out, and I was able to get her headstall back off her without too much of a fuss. And her friends welcomed her back with a sniff and a sneeze, and let her share in the food.

Phew, what a morning. But the thing that worries me (aside from the obvious question of how are animals getting out when the gates are closed and latched and there are no breaks in the fences) is … if things happen in threes … what’s next today?