Nadine

Post date: Aug 22, 2016 10:33:6 PM

Our first two llamas, Nadine and Cissy, were purchased from a neighbor in the late 1990's, when we lived in Atascadero. Cissy passed away a few years ago, and just this past Friday Nadine died - and is now running in the Andean pastures of Heaven! Nadine was a little different from most of our llamas, which we picked for fiber - she was tall, narrow, lean, and long-legged and bred for packing. She was one of the most intelligent of our llamas and certainly the most inquisitive. We bred her once, and two photos below show her with Alamo, her baby, who looked a lot like her but, alas, not nearly as intelligent. We still have Alamo.

When we moved from Atascadero, we loaded the llamas two at a time into our old horse trailer, and brought them to the ranch. Nadine's baby was still small so we saved Nadine and Alamo for last. Customarily, when the trailer began to move, the llamas would "cush" or lie down, and stay down until we arrived at our destination. This being the case, we decided that Jim would drive the truck pulling the horse trailer and I would ride in the back with Nadine and baby Alamo so that she would not accidentally roll on him. Instead of lying down Nadine stood up the whole way, and in fact stuck her head out of the back of the trailer so she could look around. I had her haltered, by the way, and on a lead so no danger of her jumping out or trying to. She was no problem! In fact, she was a great source of entertainment for people following us on the highway and other roads; they would point and laugh and shout with joy. So did the folks on the sidewalks in San Miguel as our truck and trailer with the royal llama looking out the back, nodding regally to her fans, rolled majestically through the town.

Nadine must have been pretty close to 20 years old, which I believe is doing pretty well for a llama. We had traveled out of town on Friday, and our friends Devon and Anna had the misfortune to discover that Nadine has passed away. We returned to our ranch and early the next morning took her body to its resting place - but her spirit ranges far and wide!

Nadine is on the far left in this photo.