Meet Clara Llama

Did you know I have llamas?  Did you know I recently acquired a new one?  It's true, I did.  Here she is the day I got her.

I took her on because my friend who had her was moving and couldn't keep Clara.  She was all alone at her previous home so she is really better off here, in a herd now.

Clara was badly in need of trimming so I finally got around to catching her and going at her shaggy matted dirty hair with a good pair of scissors.  I covered her eyes with a cloth and that helped calm her down so I could work on her.  Took awhile but here are the results:

I can actually see her tail now!  Before she had some filthy dags hanging at her hind end and now they are gone.  (dags are the dirty matted stringy hair that hangs around the tail area)  I'd like to catch and trim Gracie next.  She is the lighter colored one in the picture above.  

This picture shows the mass of hair I cut off of her.  I couldn't save it, too dirty and full of burrs and totally matted.  I saved a couple of chunks thinking I might be able to needle felt them into some sort of thing to give back to the friend I got Clara from. 
Before, when I only had 3 llamas, Gracie was at the bottom of the pecking order.  Someone has to be and she is the youngest (at 7) and came after the others (before Clara) so it was her by default.  Now she has someone to pick on so she is happy.  Clara doesn't seem to mind being at the bottom.  I think she is just happy to be in a herd instead of alone!  She is very sweet and inquisitive, as is Gracie.  The other two are older, probably getting close to 20, which is fairly old for a llama.  They are both stand offish and don't like to be touched.  Clara is about 13.  The original 3 llamas were used to wading across the creek to get to the big hay field.

It took Clara awhile to get up the nerve to follow them.  She didn't know how deep the water was.  Eventually she gave it a try and now crosses back and forth with the rest at will.

Here they are, waiting to cross the creek.

The water isn't terribly deep as you can see by the water line on Angel.  Surprise, the oldest llama, (she came with that name, all of them came named) likes to hug the fence line as she crosses and she barely gets her feet wet.  Clara took a cue from her and crosses like that.  Angel and Gracie like to just wade on through.  Gracie in particular likes to play in the water.  I have to keep the water barrel tied down otherwise she will play in the water and knock it over.

I made this last image into a card for my friend and sent it to her.  She misses Clara but is so grateful I was able to give her a good home.  I'm happy to have her.  We were already supplying the hay for Clara in her old home so now we will just put it in our barn this year.  Hay season coming up soon!
Here are a couple of links to old llama posts I've made, in case you want to see more of them:
Llama Love
Llama quilt
Meet Grace