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?

Alpacaland Revisited

I am back in what I have come to affectionately call "Alpacaland," my friends' farm a few hours away from Melbourne. They've gone on a road trip and asked me to farm sit, so here I am. I am looking after 37 alpacas, three dogs, a handful of hens, and helping look after a couple of horses, in addition to the property itself.

The animals have been pretty easy to deal with. I have to feed the chooks and collect their eggs in the mornings. Then I walk over to the alpaca paddocks, count the animals and make sure they are all healthy, and give them some food. I also have to look after the dogs and feed them nasty bones which I have to buy from the butcher a few times a week (plucking the bones out of the plastic bags is not the highlight of this vegetarian's day). I also have to give food and water to a couple of the horses a few times a day. All in all, not too terribly difficult.

I did have one minor mystery that might never be solved. Rick had told me there were 27 alpacas in the girls' paddock, and 11 in the boys'. The morning Rick showed me all my duties, we went to the girl paddock to feed them. I quickly counted 27 alpacas and then had a look at them to make sure they were all alright. We cornered a plucked a thorny vine from one of the girls, then fed them and went on to see the boys.

But the next day, as I started counting, there were only 26. I counted again. And again. And again. 26. There are only 26. Who is missing? By now I've grown to know or recognize many of the girls, and I could tell who wasn't missing. It wasn't one of the babies, not one of the rose-grays (a pretty tie-dyed-like color), not one of the old grannies, not one of the white ones who always comes up to me. So who was missing?

I counted again, and there were still only 26. So after a quick walk around part of the paddock, I went back up to the house, got Josie (glad this happened before they left!) and we headed back out there together to have a walk and see if we could find her. It is unlikely that one of the alpacas would just wander off on her own - they stay in their herd. It is possible it fell down a gully, so we went and had a look for tracks, but found nothing. We went down in to the gully and followed it for a while, but there was no sign of anything. We walked the fence line around the whole paddock, but no alpaca, no blood, no signs of a struggle, no bits of fluff, nothing. It's a mystery.

Now, to make matters confusingly annoying, Rick is second guessing whether or not there were 27 to begin with, or if he had just forgot there were only 26 now. He can't remember. And I am also second guessing whether I actually counted 27 the previous day or if I had counted one twice. I am pretty sure there were 27. I counted 27. But now, I can't be sure.

Interestingly, a guy called yesterday and said he had found a stray alpaca ... so could that be ours? We also know another alpaca had been wandering around a nearby town (prior to ours disappearing) so he could have been calling about that one. It doesn't seem that the tag number on the found alpaca matches one of ours, but we are looking in to it. To be continued.

In other Alpacaland news, I am spending the rest of my time enjoying the serenity of the country. The sky is huge, the stars are plentiful, and driving on the left is getting easier the more I do it. It's winter here in Australia, so it's getting pretty cold, especially at night. But I've got a wood-burning stove and a fireplace to keep me warm. No heat in the bedrooms though, so I'm under about 5 blankets! Cooking on the wood-burning stove has been fun, but keeping the fireplace going has been a challenge since recent rain has left most of the wood damp. I've spent a bit of time drumming up in the studio on Josie's djimbe drums, trying to improve my skills.
I often sit down in the girls' paddock and spend some time with them, as some them are quite friendly and happily sit there whilst I pet them. Sometimes they are skittish and run away, while other times they come right up to me and stand there for as long as I am willing to pet them. I must admit though, I do find myself talking to the animals more often than not, so I wonder what would happen if I actually lived out in a solitary country environment. But I do occasionally have some human company. Windsor came out to visit last weekend and entertained the alpacas with some whistling and throat singing. We cooked yummy vegetarian food and horrible scones, and he did his mountain man thing, chopping heaps of wood so I would stay warm. And this coming weekend, Mike, Nor and Rachel should be visiting, so I'll see if I can get a bit of a drum circle going.

Hopefully my next entry will include news of a found alpaca! Hope everyone is happy and enjoying summer in the Northern Hemisphere!.