Llamas on the web

Space Cadet, 06/03/2001

If you go to Amazon.com, you can select from such diverse categories as music, cars and camera equipment. It is surely only a matter of time before the home page offers links to "llama sales". The market is already out there and on-line.

The definitive llama site, at least for my money, is llamweb.com. Here you can learn lots about llamas, catch up on llama conferences and events, take the llama colour test (is it black? or is it recessive black?) and order from the site's popular stud service.

"Trevor is our treasure," explains one seller in the stud service. "He has a most unusual tail; the fiber on it is wavy, crimped, and about three feet long," the offer continues. To me, Trevor sounds like something of a mutant llama, so save your money. Instead, go for the stud services of Golden Ridge Garth Brooks, described as handsome, heavily woolled and having "great presence." At only $350 with a live birth guarantee, he sounds like better value than Trevor.

If you do buy a llama, beware of rattlesnakes. You can read about 4 year-old Glacier's near-death experience after a snakebite on Claud and Sharon's site. Glacier also has his own page where he explains, for the benefit of other web-enabled llamas, how he learned to ring a snake warning bell ("I take herd leadership very seriously", explains Glacier).

If you catch a snake stalking your llama, ExoticMeats.com has the ideal recipe. To make Barbecued Rattlesnake, cut 1 rattlesnake (freshly skinned, head removed, 4' or more) into 4" - 6" sections. Marinate the snake in barbecue sauce then wrap the sections in tinfoil and barbecue over charcoal for 45 minutes. Serves 6. If your snake escapes you, ExoticMeats.com will sell rattlesnake meat to you for just $3 per lb.

And if, tragically, you don't catch the snake and it kills your beloved llama, you can write an obituary and add it to those for other snakebite victims at the llama obituary web site, a memorial page of Eskimo.com (sadly the page is now deceased).

Of course, the main problem with buying a llama is knowing what to do with it. I asked around. My friend Stephen told me, "It is really hard to find a spot in the centre of Edinburgh to just let your llama roam and chill. And my llama (Derek) gets really grumpy when I leave him in the sitting room all day." Stephen, being a tolerant guy, doesn't seem to mind Derek's llama smell, if Derek has one.

Since Derek gets grumpy in the sitting room, Stephen could try taking him to California for a session with John Mallon, founder of the Mallon Method. John says you can bring him your worst-behaved llama and he offers a money back guarantee if he fails to build trust between you and your llama.

Or maybe Derek just needs a companion. Just $1500 would buy the sassy-sounding Cocoa Chanel. She comes with a "beautiful" face and "rich cocoa coloured body." Together, Derek and Cocoa Chanel can happily snort, trot and spit their way around Stephen's sitting room. And Stephen can just relax, enjoying the delicate fragrance of Derek and the pungent eau de livestock of Cocoa Chanel.