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Monday, June 25, 2007

Jeff the Alpaca Rustler



On our trip to Maine, we stopped in at a quaint little alpaca farm store to have a look around. The owner of the farm was quite friendly and offered us a lot of interesting information on alpacas. It was quite obvious that he really enjoyed what he was doing and was quite proud of where himself for doing it. He used to be a high-powered executive and decided to retire early and raise alpacas. Those babies are expensive, let me tell you: $22,000 for one of his females. Anywho, I digress. Since Dad sprung for an alpaca sweater, we got a ‘free’ tour of the farm. We were all asking lots of questions because, well, its very interesting stuff if you are nerds like us. Jeff asked how they found proper vet care, and Dad even asked about the possibilities of artificial insemination. Leave it to Dad! The man was very informative and chatty about his highly valuable alpaca herd. Jeff then asked if he had any problems with alpaca theft. Well, that kind of took the guy off guard. He got a funny look on his face and asked if Jeff was thinking about stealing an alpaca! Jeff, kidding of course, said ‘No, I don’t think I could fit one in my car. They are a little too tall.’ I don’t think it helped that earlier the guy was talking about how he practices alternative farming and we asked him if he was growing some Maui Waui Bud on the back forty. As we were leaving, the guy very thoroughly scoped out our license plate, no doubt running inside to write it down after we left. You never young guy with a pregnant wife and small child might sneak up and stuff one of your alpacas into their Pontiac and drive away!

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