Pico and Quiros. I couldn’t find a baby photo of Quiros, so here are the two brothers having one of their many fights.

Jj is for Jottings 30. Geisha’s Second Cria.
The story was told of the problems we had with Geisha’s first cria in Jottings 23. Thinking this was just a bit of bad luck, we arranged for a husband again – can’t remember if he was the same one or if Geisha’s a bigamist – and nine months later she was obviously going to have trouble again. By late afternoon she was looking very uncomfortable and nothing was happening so I called the vet. It was a Monday, and I had for many years been going to choir on a Monday at 8pm. Not this Monday! The alpacas flatly refused to go into the yards, I still hadn’t managed to catch her by the time the vet arrived, and it was beginning to get dark. After a few fruitless attempts we tried the rope trick – we each held an end of a very long rope and walked around the alpacas – like portable yards. The trouble was, the whole gang of twelve (sounds like a Sherlock Holmes story!) took off and we couldn’t manage to hold them. So we ended up with rope burns and no alpacas. I’m sure it would have looked very funny to an onlooker – a vet and yours truly racing around a paddock at night in pursuit of a gang of alpacas. We didn’t think it was very funny, and I’m sure Geisha didn’t, either. Anyway we had to give in. The vet left without having even seen which one was his client, and we had to let nature take its course.
The next morning there was a bedraggled little thing with Geisha, and the whole process of milking her and bringing Quiros in at night started all over again until he was out of danger. As you can see from the book Quiros is white like his dad and grew into quite a tall alpaca. Maybe all that rushing around the paddock beforehand prevented him from being a pipsqueak like Pico. Needless to say, Geisha’s second cria was also her last. We certainly weren’t going there again!