Llamas are supposed to be great protection animals, but Coco didn’t seem interested in doing her job at all. She’d only lived with us a few months and my husband was planning to find her a new home. We had Hereford calves romping in our fields, and hungry coyotes patrolling the forest at the back of our property.
All we ever saw our llama do was nap and eat.
“Come on, Coco, do your job,” I’d plead.
She’d just placidly stare at me, shaking her long hair off her narrow face, and blinking her long-lashed muppet eyes. Hair that had become far too long for the summer. Every two years you had to shear a llama.
The last time (two years ago) that my husband, Luke, fired up the clippers, she’d fought furiously, trying to defend herself by biting and thrashing. He was terrified of her.
“She might kill me. We’re buying a donkey instead. Coco goes,” Luke said.
I tried to argue with him. Even though we’d never seen our exotic pet fight a coyote, we also hadn’t lost a cow yet. My husband loved his cows, especially Velvet, a beautiful, a fair-sized Blonde Aquitaine calf, recently born with wide brown eyes, furry white ears, and a pink nose. She was the first born from Whiskey, our prize show animal. A big golden cow who had won multiple ribbons at local fairs.
To make sure his cattle got the absolute best grass, Luke had set up temporary electric fencing on the rest of our 50 acre property in the hay fields. This gave them more room to graze, but it also brought them closer to the predators lurking in the trees. We had enough of the flexible portable fencing to create a long lane almost to the back where a large river gurgled through a forest. The fence followed the ancient maple trees, planted on either side of an old overgrown laneway to the river.
We just had a small herd. Four brood cows and their four calves.
Every morning we opened the gate of the cow paddock, and Coco, along with the moms and babies, headed out to eat fresh grass. When dusk fell, they came back for a drink of water, and we locked them in.
Until the day they all didn’t come back.
The sun was warm, and the late spring breeze rustled the tall grass in the fields. I had just pulled into the driveway from my day job in the city and Luke was waiting for me. He paced back and forth, and his face, red and upset.
I was hardly out of the car when he rushed over. “I’m missing a calf.”
“What do you mean, you’re missing a calf. Who’s missing?”
“I can’t find Velvet. Can you help me look for her?”
My stomach sunk. Of all the animals on our farm, did it have to be gentle, sweet Velvet?
Luke was fighting tears. He’d been pulling on his hair, making it stand straight up on his head.
“Okay, you’re afraid you’re going to find her dead?” I asked gently.
He nodded. I didn’t even bring my purse and bag into the house; I left them in the car and followed him. My heart thumped double-time and I fought an impending sense of dread as I followed him to the main cow paddock. All four mom cows were eating hay and relaxing by the shelter. Whiskey (Velvet’s mother) was chewing her cud, laying by the water trough, and didn’t seem perturbed at all.
“What kind of mom are you? Where’s your baby?” I asked her.
Whiskey’s big jaws moved round and round as she blinked her big brown eyes.
“They all came back in except Velvet,” Luke said. “This probably isn’t good, let’s get it over with.”
The sun was just starting to set as we walked down the middle lane towards the forest. The maple leaves on the enormous trees trembled in the breeze, and the day looked too perfect for a tragedy.
“Why would Whiskey come back without Velvet? She’s been such a good Mom,” I asked.
Luke didn’t meet my eyes, he was too busy looking for holes in his fencing. “I know, I don’t get it.”
The waist-high green electrical boundary was still intact in the long chute he’d built. Most of the grass had been eaten down over the last couple weeks, but there was still lots of good forage. No need for the cows to test the perimeter. We walked until we hit the very back of the confined area, several feet from where the forest began. The green fencing looked a bit bedraggled in one spot but was still standing.
“Well, something happened here.” Luke pointed to the kinks in the plastic strands.
“Hey! There’s Coco.” I pointed to the llama in the high grass by the edge of the forest.
They were yards away from the fenced area, right by the forest where the coyotes lived.
I hadn’t even noticed the llama was missing from the main paddock in all the drama. Coco was still, her head hovering over something, the bushes brushing her stomach.
“I didn’t clock that Coco was also gone.” Luke said, his voice tight.
He climbed over the fence and gave me a hand to help me hop over without getting shocked.
My heart was in my throat, and tears dampened my eyes. “Brace yourself.”
“I know.”
Coco didn’t move as we walked up to her. That was odd. The llama liked her personal space and would always walk off when approached by a human.
Laying in the grass beneath Coco’s head, Velvet was stretched out on the ground, her legs straight and golden head immobile. The llama wasn’t stressed or on high alert, instead she reached down and chomped on a mouthful of berries from a raspberry bush.
I peered at the immobile calf. “Do you see any blood?”
“No.” He took one boot and nudged Velvet.
The calf woke with a startled “Maaa” and scrambled to her feet. The hair on the side of her pretty head stuck out in all directions, her eyes blinked, and she teetered off-balance.
I half laughed, half cried, wiping the tears from my eyes as a warm feeling eclipsed the cold dread in my chest. Velvet was alive!
My husband looked like he’d just won the lottery. A big grin split his face as he picked up the calf, wrapping one long arm around her hindquarters, and the other around her neck. Velvet struggled but gave up quickly.
“Oh my god, Velvet was having a nap,” I almost sang.
“She must have jumped over the fence and Coco followed her.”
The little calf was completely unharmed. I pointed at Coco, standing a few feet from us.
“When the rest of the cows left to go back to the barn for dinner, she stayed to watch over her. No wonder Whiskey wasn’t worried, she left Velvet with a babysitter.”
Coco blinked her long eyelashes at me as if to say, Of course, and went back to eating raspberries.
She’d been relieved of duty.
“That llama is the best guardian we’ve ever purchased.”
“Enough to fork out the cash for a professional to shear her next time?”
“Absolutely, she’s got a home here forever.”
I smiled and looked at my wonderful, strange, babysitter. She would never leave.
When we returned to the edge of the green fencing, I took two big sticks and pushed the plastic strands to the ground while Luke heaved Velvet over it, letting her go when she was on the other side. In protest the calf bucked and charged down the lane. Coco jumped over the low area and loped slowly after Velvet. Both headed back to the main paddock.
Luke and I walked back ––considerably happier than we had been at the beginning of the hunt. When we returned to the cow paddock, Velvet was slurping aggressively at her mom’s teat, and Coco was having a much-deserved drink of water. Luke closed the gate, and we went back to the house to get drinks of our own.
The mystery of the missing calf was solved. Coco had earned her place and our affection. She was well worth a professional haircut. Coco was our official cow nanny.