Llama and I



I have befriended a Llama.  It all started whilst taking a short bike ride up a wooded path, to an open expanse of farmers fields that lay near a village.  Catching my breath from the steep climb, I found myself blinking a couple of times, making out not a sheep or a horse, but a lama.
     To get a closer look, I pulled up some grass and held it out in my hand.  The Llama tilted its head curiously and began to stumble towards me across the uneven verge.  Watching its legs long like stilts, its body doing a balancing act on these thin sticks that don`t seem enough to hold it up.  I stretch out my hand further, full of grass and hear myself say ”come on” coaxing her towards me.  Her fur is thick like a grand dame`s fur coat.  Her neck long and at an obtuse angle.  Her hips too wide for her legs she seems almost to stumble in eager anticipation at this generous stranger, but then stops in her tracks and suddenly cautious as if she realises that this may not be what it seems.  She turns her back on me, but my persistent generosity is causing her to try a second and third time, before I gradually get tired of this game ride off into the countryside before me. 

The following day I have forgotten all about our encounter.  I have taken a long twilight walk and am happily walking at a fast pace as the dew begins to fall.  I notice a deserted stone one storey hut and remind myself that it holds horses hay and therefore cannot be scary.  As I convince myself of this fact, I feel someone is watching me, I quicken my pace and act extra cheery to counter-act this feeling.  Looking left, I realise that not someone, but something is watching.  Having left my glasses at home, I can just make out in the fading light the fur that looks similar to that of a mammoth, or indeed snuffles from sesame street.  I stop and stare at this elongated creature that is staring back at me, not moving an inch.  It seems to have wandered from its usual place at the top of the field to this bottom enclave, near its boundary and stayed there, for no apparent reason, almost nestling against the wall.  I feel caught out and have an inkling this lama feels the same way too.  It`s almost as if we were both happily enjoying our solitude with the birds and nature, only to be found-out, discovered, revealed.  We stay for a few long minutes frozen in each others gaze.  It´s almost as if we are both willing each other out, whose alone space is this?...Yours or mine...?  I decide to leave quietly.  This oddly graceful creature, lifted from her Peruvian habitat to provide jumpers to Yorkshire folk has no doubt more of an entitlement to her space that my flying family visit could ever pertain to.  I feel a strange affinity to this creature, as if she has been given a fate that makes her necessary to this adopted landscape and yet forever, on the outside, a loner, a wanderer, a unique creature full of mystery even unto herself.

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