A grudge we can live with

So after a week of some pretty intense birth/death/birth/death/birth pendulum swings we were thrilled when one of our foundation females just had a good old run of the mill delivery. No drama, no intrigue. Just a normal, healthy, and pretty interesting looking King of Ladies boy. Hurrah for boring. Not that we were allowed to get too close to him to find out. His dam is easily one of the most protective, and not coincidentally also one of the best, mothers in our entire herd.

CPeruvian Stacey has been part of our program since 2002/2003 when she arrived in the large group of females that were part of the buy-in into the North American Alpaca Stud. Unfortunately for Jennifer her first intimate one on one encounter with Stacey was not a particularly positive one. Having arrived in Vermont just one week prior, Stacey went into labor with a bad dystocia with a presentation not unlike that of Pristine last week actually: both front legs and neck back. Unfortunately the outcome on that occasion was not positive though and her first time giving birth at CCNF ended with a stillborn female. Then, as now, the person attempting to fix that dystocia and help deliver the cria was none other than my dearly beloved. Unfortunately for Jen, Stacey didn’t seem to understand that she was trying to help her or her cria, just that the end result was a dead baby. Most importantly in that case Jen was the last person she ever saw with the dead cria and Stacey hasn’t let her forget it ever since. We have come to believe that Stacey views my better half as the baby snatcher. Eight years later the girl still holds a grudge. Not that we mind. Were it not for Stacey we wouldn’t have Avenger, Savanna, or her granddaughter Panamera.  When you birth alpacas of that quality you can quite frankly be as nasty as you want to be, all will be tolerated and forgiven.

I don’t want to create the impression that Stacey is one of those sweetheart animals with everyone else who then sprouts special devil horns whenever ever my wife approaches. She is an import after all who came to us with very limited prior human interaction. Though that being said there is no denying that she saves an extra special bit of venom for Jen. Kim or I can at least sneak into her pen and snag her newborns with only a partial freak-out from mom. I happened to be away chaperoning a field trip for our 4th grader’s class when this last guy was born on Friday and forgetting myself I asked Jen over the phone what the cria looked like. “I don’t know, she wouldn’t let me look!” was the reply I got. Apparently Jennifer stuck around just long enough to verify that it was indeed a boy and to dip the little guy’s umbilicus and then got the heck out of there. Stacey making it clear throughout the entire process — replete with biting even — that even years later the baby snatcher was still not welcome!