Well, you asked for alpacas so now you’re getting them. When I mentioned in the comments of last week’s Cadbury’s viral video post that we had six alpacas at home, I lied.
We actually have seven. I completely forgot about our youngest one, a white female named Gia. Sorry, Gia. Here she is, judging me for forgetting about her:
The short answer to “What made you decide to keep alpacas?” is actually as Irish as it can get. The Late Late Show. Seriously. Around ten years ago, a woman was being interviewed on The Late Late about her alpaca farm and it was enough to make my parents fall in love with the animals and see about getting some of their very own.
We’ve always had animals of some sort, you see. Until I was around fifteen, my parents used to breed St. Bernards, so I grew up surrounded by huge, gorgeous, floppy dogs. (Which is why I go to absolute pieces whenever I see any kind of giant dog and plot to kidnap it for myself.) We also had horses for a while, but when that came to an end, my parents were left with empty land and nothing to put in it. Enter the alpacas!
Two pregnant female alpacas, to be precise. We called them Brandy and Cody and over the years we’ve bred and sold alpacas, named them after hobbits and Waterford hurlers and wrestled them to the ground in order to give them worming injections. Well, the more rambunctious ones, anyway.
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They’re lovely, inquisitive animals and if you think they’re cute when fully grown, just check them out as babies! A baby alpaca is called a cria and their fleece is THE SOFTEST THING YOU WILL EVER FEEL. When you pick one up you never want to put it down, as they are scientifically more adorable than an entire basket of kittens in tiny hats. (Probably. Either way, that’s the kind of research I can get on board with.)
They need to be shorn once a year, so during the beginning of summer they go from fleecy fluff monsters to demented-looking poodles, but still manage to retain their trademark cuteness. There doesn’t appear to be anyone in Ireland that can spin their fleece into wool on a large scale though, so at this stage my parents just keep them because they’re deadly.
Alpacas are also sort of badass, in their own fluffy way. They’ll chase foxes away, so farmers have been known to keep an alpaca with their herd of sheep, in order to protect them from predators. They’re essentially really cute bodyguards. However, if you anger an alpaca they’ll spit at you like a camel would and you’d best avoid that stuff, because it smells AWFUL. Even after three showers and a change of clothes.
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The seven we have at the moment are our three females, the aforementioned Brandy, Cody and Gia and four dudes named Bilbo, Charlie, Chevy and Dan. I’ll leave you with one of my favourite photos of them, which shows Charlie pulling his best OMG face while being confused by newly-fallen snow.
