Montana Large Animal Sanctuary - The Llamas Move On, So Must I

There is no dust at the Montana Large Animal Sanctuary to settle. At least not yet. There is dirt, then snow as you might expect during a Montana winter and bone freezing cold, then mud frozen in some places and oozing in others. Then the snow and the freeze. There is an overwhelming sense of melancholy and sadness when I think that by the time there is dust to settle in Montana, this disaster will have faded from most people's memories. Those that have seen and touched the llamas will never forget, others will remember it as 'something bad happened'.

As of today, the final evacuation of the surviving llamas is in the end game and the last of the transportation is on auto-pilot. As I write this llamas are being loaded to go to Washington State, followed by the transport of llamas to California. A small group of special needs llamas will be going to Colorado, and a few will be removed from the Sanctuary but staying in Montana. They will all finally be gone from their own private hell that was supposed to be sanctuary.

Those that didn't survive remain where they were dumped by uncaring hands of prior caretakers- in the death ditch. The land is there, the buildings are there and there are plans to sell the property by the self-centered member of the board of directors of the Sanctuary. The ghosts of the dead will wander the land forever. I hope the new owners appreciate these ghosts bring their own special power and spirit to the land's new and hopefully brighter future.

The llamas that managed to survive have found their third chance at life. I have made my peace with my own helplessness to save them, but thanks to the efforts of others, hundreds have found new homes. I have said my private prayer for those that have died, and may still die despite the best efforts of others greater in strength of resolve than I.

This should be a moment of glorious celebration but instead I am left with anger and the foul taste of deceit and lies that penetrates deep into my soul. Outside of the llama community, organizations spun wheels within wheels within wheels playing politics and games creating obstacles and telling lies upon lies to anyone who would listen. Self possessed and self serving individuals wrote glorious diatribes about their personal sacrifices, focussing more often than not on their efforts to save lives when in the end 4 llamas were put to death. The pain and suffering these four llamas continued to have at this grandiose savior's hands was unnecessary. Her all consuming narcissism was incapable of grasping any reality but her own. They should have been put down long before the first of the year. She claimed to care yet interfered at every turn, disrupting evacuation arrangements, and has threatened to collaborate with others to malign the integrity and efforts of hundreds of people across the country who successfully evacuated the llamas long before she imposed her philosophies into the mix of problems being confronted by the llamas and the people who WERE helping. These same people will be the ones that continue on caring for the llamas and finding them homes long after she slinks back to her corner of the world and shouts to anyone who will listen that she alone saved the llamas. And so....

It is time for me to not so quietly move on. It is time to focus on my life, my family, and my llamas. Everyone will have versions of lessons learned from the disaster that was the Montana Large Animal Sanctuary. Mine is perhaps self centered and selfish when looked at by others, but is true to my heart and recognizes for the first time in more than a decade since I found the magic that llamas have brought to my life, what my limits are. I should be celebrating that the llamas will live on in new lives, but I am filled with anger.

It is time for privacy, for quiet, and for peace in my life. Good night, god bless, and may you all find peace in your lives.

Eagle Economics

Bald Eagles are truly incredible and magnificent creatures. Obviously not the same as llamas but they are in the same class of brilliance, dedication to each other, and an obvious passion and enjoyment of their own existence.

The economy being what it is, you take work when and where it is. So for the past two months I have been working as a road construction flagger just outside of Bremerton Washington in this weird little 'Bermuda Triangle' of Gorst [yes its spelled correctly], Port Orchard, and Bremerton. It's a quiet neighborhood area and the traffic is relatively light with all same people coming and going several times during the day. They stop to chat occasionally, and one of the more obviously affluent and dare I say arrogant to the extreme women that come by daily actually asked me if I liked being a flagger in a tone that came across as usual for her as if I was something she would scrape off the bottom of her 200 dollar shoes. And so the answer was a somewhat less than polite "not only no, but [explective of your choice] no."


View Larger Map

Now you really want to zoom in on a larger map and look closely at where Anderson Hill Rd literally drops into and off of SR16. That's where we have been working for past three weeks from there UP the hill towards Hansen Rd. No big deal and it doesn't give you a good idea of what's going on, but its a sewer installation job down the middle of the road.

ANYWAY, when you look at the map at the intersection of Cook Rd and Anderson Hill Rd you will see a HUGE looking lawn with nothing on it at all. To the left of that field you will see a row of trees leading away from the highway.

AND SMACK IN THE MIDDLE of that row of trees is a multi trunked 250 foot plus tall Douglas fir tree with an eagles nest in it. Bert and Ernie live up there, and yes I know they are a pair, but that's my names for them so live with it.

What you need to know about Bremerton Washington is that its claim to fame is its naval shipyard with all sorts of aircraft carriers and other Navy ships on site regularly. From their vantage point, the eagles have a clear and constant line of sight view of every ship docked or moored or coming or going. Now I suppose I could make all sorts of metaphorical references to the presence of eagles overlooking the ships, and how they act as a symbol of the freedom and protection our military provides every American citizen. But guess what folks.... the eagles don't care.

They have their own world of economics, loyalty and survival. I have watched them now for more than two months and their routines are incredible and efficient. EVERY morning, one of them flies out of the nest on to the very top of the tree and hangs out looking across the bay, then up the hill to the house with all the chickens, and even eyeballs the wayward cats that wander around all day long. No there will be no graphic tales here.

I have watched them greet what must have been last years offspring with a mixture of recognition and rejection, clearly showing and stating that yes you WERE ours, but now you are on your own, its time for another hatching. I have watched them PLAY, literally in mid air, swooping and diving around and at each other. And I got to watch them breed several weeks ago first in mid air, then finishing I suppose what they started rather quickly high in the top of nearby tree.

I have watched them fly circles around the alder and fir trees for several minutes looking carefully for just the right branch or limb that they needed for reasons only known to them, then dive into the trees, grab it with their talons and swoop it off into their nest to add to it. It is quite something to see an eagle with a limb in its talon flying across that open field area. Many of those limbs are what most of us might call kindling firewood, they are that big. And its obviously not just a random grabbing. It's orchestrated. One will land with the limb, and the other one, soars off almost at the exact same time to go get something else to add to the nest. During the low tides, they swoop down into the bay and pluck up grasses to add to the nest.

I have watched them violently defend their nest and territory against a wayward great horned owl. That was an amazing thing to see and hear. Just like a llama alarm call I heard this noise that was not something you could confuse with anything but an alarm... AND I WEAR EARPLUGS on the job. As I looked up there was the owl flying by looking for a place to land. And out of absolutely no where the second eagle came flying in, wings partially folded at break neck speed heading straight for the owl. The other eagle flew out of the nest and perched up on the top of the tree and they literally took turns tag teaming this poor owl. As soon as it would dodge one eagle, the other would swoop down at it in the same break neck dive, while the first recovered from its dive and perched screaming on the top of the tree. And this went on for almost 15 minutes as they chased this owl off to a distance of more than a mile that I could see.

But it was orchestrated, it was choreographed and it was efficient. Like the llamas I love and adore, they have a bond that even from the distance offered to us is clear and evident and they will fight to survive not for some high minded sense of morality but for the sake of life and survival itself. And it doesn't come from complicated moral values or issues of freedom or equality or justice; it just is their raison d'être.

So what's the lesson to be learned? There unfortunately is none. We humans are faced in this country and the world with an economic crisis some liken to the panic of the 1970's while still others the Great Depression. Take your pick, it really doesn't matter, things are bad, real bad and will get worse. The bottom line for us puny humans in the trenches is much like my two eagles; the need to focus on survival has become of paramount importance.

But unlike the eagles, whose lives seem to have point and focus and pattern and comfort of sorts, we have created a life as humans that have made almost every aspect of survival as we know it totally and completely dependent on a complicated woven pattern of a magnitude and scope that makes even the simplest thing like the computer or cell phone or pda you are reading this on over and above anything related to survival, but WE think it is.

And that is our downfall.

Speed of progression to the precipice of collapse is being measured in terms that when all is said and done has nothing to do with the basics of survival, but again WE think it is.

Bert and Ernie, my eagles, will continue building their nest, and will eventually lay one or two eggs and I will be long gone and off to some other grand adventure standing in the middle of the road flipping a sign to stay one step ahead of all the people who stand in line with their hands out for money. They won't care if unemployment is 4% or 14% or 40%; it doesn't matter to their lives. They won't care if the Dow Jones industrial average is 6000 or 60000; it doesn't matter to their lives.

But for now, I watch my eagles and envy the simplicity of their lives. I have no pretense that their existence is hard, it is in fact much harder than mine in many aspects down to the most fundamental core of living or dying on any given day, but their methodology, their processes, and their way of dealing with their existence leaves much to be envied.

And I do.

Yes Virginia there IS a Santa Claus

I have no clue why this grabbed me, and it of course has nothing to do with llamas, but the season is swirling about us, and this year may be the one where the meaning of simplicity in life will require focus of celebration. So without further comment, the original text of the original story of Virginia and Santa Claus. Yes I know TWO posts on the same day, amazing eh?

Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus
By Francis P. Church, first published in The New York Sun in 1897. [See The People’s Almanac, pp. 1358–9.]

We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

Dear Editor—

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia O’Hanlon


Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Llamas NOT for Obama or McCain or Anyone Else Apparently

Everybody it seems does a llamas obama blog mostly I suppose because it just rolls off your tongue. We own llamas, and now we will indeed have a President named Obama, so what better way to share with you what our LLAMAS think about the world of politics as it stands to date.

As you know from my last posting I am commuting of late and have had very little time to much of anything with the llamas the past two weeks.
I leave in the dark and get home in dark with just enough time to go to bed.

BUT.....
On election day I was home relatively early and got to see both speeches
by the major candidates as the results made it clear that Sen Obama was going to be our next President of the United States.

Full video John McCain

Full video Barack Obama

Both speeches were full of powerful emotions and recognized fully the intensity and potential catastrophic impacts the issues facing our nation are and will have on all our lives. I was impressed with Senator McCain's comments, and quite overwhelmed by now President Elect Obama's recognition of the power of the moment, its implications, and the uphill struggle this country will face in the months and years ahead. The single most overlooked phrase in his entire speech came quietly and I am just paraphrasing, but essentially he said the problems particularly with the economy did not happen overnight and would not be solved overnight, maybe not even in ONE TERM OF OFFICE.

Given I still had time on my hands before I had to go to sleep I wandered out to visit briefly with the girls. Those of you that own llamas know that once they have settled down for the night, they tend to take umbrage to being disturbed. First, they have had a busy day eating, sleeping, playing, aimlessly wandering around, playing, sleeping, and occasionally wandering into a shelter not only to eat some more, but to prove to me that no matter how much I clean it up, poop happens. Second, its nightime and after an exhausting day all they want to do is hunker down and sleep. It is also a rare thing for us to invade their lives after dark, which means we have disrupted their routine, and disrupting the routine of llamas is and act of sacrilege.

But this was one of those moments in history that requires contemplation and perspective so what better way to gain perspective than to share what is being billed as a major turning point in national, international, and human history with the llamas. After all it will impact them as well right?

They were all hunkered down and calmly watching the rains at night one of a rather significant rain storm, chewing their collective cuds, and giving me looks of disdain for intruding on their night-time routine, but they also were quite obviously aware that I had come to visit with a message of exceptional importance. All eyes and ears were focussed on me, no one jumped up and ran away.

The girls were in their usual groups in the shelters mixed and matched by age. Most of the elder girls gather in 'their' shelter so I that is where I decided to start with sharing the news in order to get the proper elder perspective.

I was amazed at their reactions to the announcement that Obama had won the election. Rachel stood up, turned around and kushed right back in the same place with her back to me. Sunny yawned, chewed on a foot that had an itch, and Tipper sneezed. Most certainly NOT the reaction the rest of the world was having.

So I asked them ok girls who exactly did you want to win the election?
And it was Rachel who looked over her shoulder and spoke for the llamas.
"Oh dear fool', she said, "it really doesn't matter in the scheme of the universe because Earth Abides ." She paused briefly and looked at the roof of the shelter before continuing.

"But since you have asked here's what we all think. You may not know this, but we knew there was an election, our hearing is incredible and while you and Chloe watch TV we hear it, when you are in the pastures talking we listen, so of course we form opinions about what it is you think. Obviously there are some problems in the world that are impacting your existence and so it effects us. The problems right now apparently are LARGE. The bar is set high, very high for anyone who would win this election thing, and as a group we have decided it didn't matter who won. The bar is too high for any magic wand solutions. The worst of it all, and please listen carefully to this, THE PROBLEM NOW THAT OBAMA HAS WON THE ELECTION by a huge overwhelming mandate for change is that the bar, already incredibly high, has just been raised by you, by the media and by President Elect Obama to a height that even I couldn't jump over." And she stopped talking.
Sunny chimed in. "You expect instant results, expect instant gratification, expect instant solutions, expect it all NOW" And she stood up and faced me. "I have watched you use all the technology things that come up and are supposed to make you more connected with the world and make your lives easier and give you more time to enjoy the simple things in life. Well if you haven't noticed, there are no simple things left in life for you humans. You have sucked the simplicity out of your lives, and you don't even know it." She turned away in disgust with me.

And NOW it was Tipper's turn to share the wisdom. "We are NOT llamas for Obama, or llamas for McCain, or even llamas for any one else. You need to understand that we are llamas for llamas. Not for any of the constructs you want us to have, but for our own. Your problems are by side note our problems, but what Obama does or doesn't do isn't going to make our lives noticably better, or simpler, it will just be one more thing happening around us, that we have no control over. And in fact it is important to understand that no ONE PERSON can make the kinds of differences in the world that you and the rest of humanity in this country silently and desparately crave." Then she walked right up to me and very quietly whispered, "You humans don't even know what it is you want. You are caught in a whirlpool of your own creation, and are being slowly sucked down into the abyss. I know that is not what you hoped to hear from us, but that is what we have seen, and what we think. Relax a bit, smell the rain, stand in it and let yourself get wet to the skin and enjoy it." And with that comment she walked out of the shelter, found a spot in the rain and just kushed to do just that.

I honestly don't know what it all means, don't know what they were trying to tell me, but can tell you for a fact that for the past five days as I watch the news spin and spin and re-spin everything about this election, I am struggling more with the comments made by my llamas. They are wise and magic creatures and when they speak it is important to listen.

I think I will think on this some more...