Rocky Mountain Llamas'
"Adopt a Road" Project

Several years ago, I had a notion in the back of my mind that it would be a good thing to participate in our local “Adopt a Road” program. When I’m driving to and fro on our country roads, I always notice the signs announcing that such-and-such a business or family has “adopted” a section of the road for clean-up. I also noticed that our farm seemed to lie near the middle of a section with no one signed up for adoption. To the west of us, Joder Arabian ranch has a section leading up to Highway 36; and east of us, Allegro Coffee covered a section. Whenever we walked our llamas along the sides of the road, we would find cans and bottles to pick up. Why not do our share and have our farm name posted on signs?! We could use our pack llamas to carry the orange trash bags.

One day that summer, I looked up the appropriate county office and phoned, got an answering machine, and left a message. No response. Some weeks later: phoned again, got answering machine, left another messaged. Still no response. Sometime later, I grumbled about this to my assistant, who said, “Let me try.” She did and talked to a real person. In due time, the necessary forms to be signed came in the mail. Clean-up has to be done twice a year, and doing it more often is optional. My assistant went to the orientation session. She learned that everyone working on the clean-up crew must wear the blaze orange vests supplied by the county, which also supplies the orange trash bags. Also, everyone participating must watch a video about picking up dangerous items such as possible drug containers and paraphernalia. The county didn’t recommend taking pets along on the clean-up, but they made no objections to our plan of using llamas. Any children attending, they advised, should be kept on the same side of the road as their parents and not be crossing back and forth.

It was fall by the time all the formalities were fulfilled and the county had erected signs at either end of our section of the road saying, “Adopt a Road / Rocky Mountain Llamas / Next 2 Miles.” We alerted the owners of several of our boarding llamas and other friends that we had joined the program, and all offered enthusiastically to participate. We scheduled our first clean-up for a Saturday in mid-October and phoned everyone. But no go—terribly cold, snow weather set in. We looked toward the next weekend. Same thing. Then I was gone to the Regional Championship Show in Oklahoma City over the first weekend in November. Finally, on the next Saturday, we had one of those glorious, sunny, warm windless days that I always associate with fall in Colorado.

Around 10:00 a.m., our friends assembled, and we caught up the llamas we planned to use and put their packs on. I thought my Jester, who had been retired from showing and other serious work, would enjoy an easy outing. Pat Weaver and Brooke Monroe saddled up their Starbuck. Vicky Foster’s experienced Stretch and Cricket were on hand. And our friends, Fiona and Claire Jucker, eager to join in this new venture, brought their two males, Peppi and Pino, in the van. Peppi was new at carrying his pack; and Pino, who was younger, came along just for the walk. Completing our crew were the Gibbons family—Michael, Cindy, Peter and Chrisy, and their pack llamas, Sterling and Peso. Two other non-llama friends, Kathy Irvine and Leslie Martien, also joined us and had their first experience working with llamas.

With the llamas saddled, we all donned our blaze-orange vests. And we set out. Because our farm lies somewhat near the middle of our adopted section of road, we divided the group in half, one group going west and the other south, then east. The county’s instructions were to work facing the traffic, so we worked our way out to the end of our respective sections on one side of the road and came back along the opposite side, the two groups meeting near the sharp turn south of our farm entrance.

At first, in my group, we didn’t find much to pick up other than cigarette butts. However, after turning the corner toward the east, beer cans and bottles, some of them half-buried, smashed or broken, began turning up with some regularity. Further on, we discovered miscellaneous scraps of metal, broken pieces of plywood, paper, cardboard and other oddments, all of which we were able to load in the packs. Brooke soon discovered that it was useful to carry a long stick to pry up some of the half-buried items. As the amount of trash accumulated, we kept an eye on the balance of the panniers so they would not be weighted too much to one side or the other.

By the time we met up with the other half of the group, we all felt that it was a lot more pleasant to have the llamas carrying these bags than it would be to haul them along by hand! It was leisurely work for the llamas, with a chance to browse on the long grass that was still growing along the fences.

As we returned home along the road next to the big pasture where the female herd was grazing, a bunch of the females came running over to stare at us. Suddenly, we saw another group of females going in the opposite direction and forming a cluster around one female. Oh oh! A sure sign that one of our anticipated babies must be on the way. All morning, as we worked our way along the road, I had been glancing periodically toward that pasture to see if there was just such an indication of a pending birth.

When we reached our front gate, some of the clean-up crew unloaded the orange bags near the gate and took all the pack llamas back to the corrals. Vicky had already set the OB bag near the gate into the females’ pasture; so Peter and Chrisy Gibbons hurried with Vicky and me out to where the concentration of females surrounded the expectant mother. Sure enough, we spotted two dark, wet feet and a head with flopping ears. We had barely enough time to get out a towel to catch the baby on. We dipped the umbilicus in Nolvasan solution. As soon as that was done, we watched and warded off the too-curious maiden females. Within two minutes of this little boy’s hitting the ground, he was standing up on his gangly legs, all by himself. In the past I had seen one up in four minutes, but this was our record!

Very soon, this strong youngster was steady enough to begin to think about nursing. With tail turned up in that “I want to nurse, please!” position, he started hunting about. But with all the curious females trying to sniff him, he was not at all certain which body he should search under. We picked him up, being sure his mom could see and sniff him, and carried him, with mom following, to the small pasture right in front of the house. This was a first-time mother, so without the distractions of her pasture mates, she had an easier time getting acquainted with this new arrival.

Vicky had arranged a nice buffet lunch for everyone, to be eaten on her porch; but with the fascination of a new baby, everyone took lawn chairs or sat on the grass in the maternity pasture, watching and marveling as the baby learned to nurse all by himself. It was an ideally warm and  sunny day, both for our first road clean-up and for a new baby to explore the world.