Who among you can look upon these faces and not feel that all too human sense of pity and awe that only an animal can excite in us?
They're as silly as they are cute, and they've got cute too spare. They're alpacas, close cousin of the llama, though much smaller and a lot easier to keep in a pen on a farm and manage without too many outrageous episodes.
Although, from what I understand, there are plenty of shennanigans going on at an alpaca farm, especially when one of them gets loose and tears hide all over the place, looking for all the world like some crossbreed of the roadrunner and a camel, hurling front legs over back legs over front legs. Then there's the neck wrestling among siblings or peers. Don't forget the spitting of regurgitated alfalfa or the trancelike naps in the sun when even a blowhorn wouldn't rouse the beasts. Oh, oh, and the bugle calls and the humming and the funny faces and the exaggerated underbite.
Here to tell us all about alpacas, why they're great and what they're doing in Le Roy, New York, instead of Peru or Bolivia, is Martha McCutchen, owner of Enchanted Forest Alpacas.
