And they spit-

We spent the day at the Three County Fair in Northampton yesterday with some friends, and I got the shock of my life.

The place was literally lousy with llamas!


No, no, not that kind of lama, this kind-


Back in my 4-H days there was always a good selection of critters at these fairs, and this one had cows, sheep, chickens and rabbits, but no pigs, goats, ducks or horses. What they did have was about 5,000 llamas.

WTF? I thought llamas ended when everyone decided they had to have a rabid rodent ferret instead.

I'm not even sure what the Hell you do with a llama, aside from trying to keep the shaggy thing deloused clean, which looks like about as pointless an excercise as trying to persuade my NeoCon uncle Fred that Faux News isn't really fair or balanced. But the demolition derby didn't start until 6:30, so we spent a few hours at the llama show. There the "advanced" llamas were taken by their owners around a course that had them jumping over two 18-inch high rails, backing up, walking across a crinkly sheet, standing still while their handler walked around them, going across a tilt-ramp, and finally walking up another ramp, across a bridge, and down two stairs.

Thrilling, eh? This may not sound exactly like bull riding, but the thing about llamas seems to be that you never know exactly where they're going to shit what they're going to do next. Your average llama has the attention span of a fruit fly, the jumpiness of a Republican congressman in a public bathroom, and is only slightly less intelligent than your average toaster oven.



Oh yeah, and when a llama decides it is not going to do something? Forget it. They may not be very big, but they have a low center of gravity and big, camel-toed feet that they plant in the ground as if they were Dik Cheney cemeted there.

And llamas spit.

So the question comes up again, why raise them? Well, they are cute as the dickens, and apparently you can use the hair to make yarn. And, although I could not be absolutely sure, as we were walking out of the arena I thought I heard the announcer, who was enumerating all the good things about llamas, utter the word "nutritious".

LlamaBurgers, anyone?


UPDATE: I have been informed that this post contains some utter bullshit slight inaccuracies. A llocal llama llover informs me that there were only about 100 llamas at the fair, and that llamas are actually quite intelligent.

When I asked "intelligent in comparison to what?" she said "President Bush".

I stand corrected.