In Memoriam

I had worked so hard and long to tame and train Traum. I cried for a month over losing him, just as we were beginning to reap the fruits of our long labors. Poor, poor Traum!

We evacuated the rest of our surviving camelids 20 miles away for 6 weeks while we built a barn in which to keep them safe at night (when cougars usually hunt). So far this has been effective in protecting our animals, but we have had cougar sightings in broad daylight, so our guard can never be let down.

Bo, Franny's companion, mourned her for over a year, moaning in remembrance as we walked the same paths they used to walk together.

During her last two years with us, Whoopie spent more and more time lying down in the pasture, eventually not even bothering to seek shelter from the rain. She groaned with every breath in the barn at night; I think her back hurt, as it was curved downward quite a bit in the hip area. Whoopie also got pushed aside from the food pellets, too old and weak to fight for position. So, we started feeding her separately, along with her best friend Zobel. She would jump with both front legs, then both back legs off the ground, a see-sawing dance of anticipation, before getting her grain and alfalfa. So endearing!

In mid-winter 2013, she began to act confused sometimes, as if she didn't recognize us and was afraid. She also started shivering whenever the temperature was below freezing. When she laid down on solid ice and refused to get up, we knew it was time. We called the vet to put her to sleep on January 12. Sweet and cooperative to the very end, Whoopie obediently went into our horse trailer and laid down. She never rose again, at least not in this life. It takes a long time for the euthanasia drugs to completely halt ruminants' breathing. But at least she felt no pain, as the vet administered a pain-killer first. Whoopie would have been 22 years old in April.

We took Whoopie to be cremated, and buried her ashes just outside the pasture, above the river, in the shade. We like to think of Whoopie's spirit-body, again and forever youthful; gaily pronking, grazing, and rolling in the grass of the Elysian fields, in Paradise above.

I miss you, Whoopie sweetheart!

About a year after we got him, a cougar ripped Zobel's ankle open to the bone. (Traum was killed by that same cougar.) Apparently Zobel barely escaped with his life. The wound couldn't be sutured: the skin was too thin and tight, and the stitches would have pulled out. It took two months of bandaging before it scarred over, and a year for the hair to re-grow.

When we bought Rider, an intact male llama, Zobel, a gelding alpaca and our only other male, was elected to keep Rider company, in a pasture separate from the girls. Zobel was not happy. Rider, younger and bigger, either trying to play or dominate, was too rough on poor old Zobel. Eventually they reached an armed truce. But Zobel was certainly relieved to rejoin the girls after we bought Zorro, another llama, to live with Rider!

Zobel had an odd way of chewing: his lower jaw made a big circle. Then we started finding cud balls in the barn, spit out at night. We suspected Zobel; sure enough, after isolating him, he was the one doing it. On-line research suggested that uneven tooth wear might be the cause. It turned out that Zobel's lower first molar on one side had a 1/2" long, needle-sharp spike of enamel sticking up! How he managed to eat without shredding his own tongue or cheek is a mystery. The vet snipped off the enamel spike, then ground it down. The pre-molar just in front of the spiked tooth was so loose, the vet pulled it out with his finger! All of Zobel's back teeth were black instead of white. Yuck. No wonder none of the other animals wanted to eat food he had breathed on: mega bad breath!

After a particularly wet winter, Zobel began to suffer from "munge," a skin condition that causes dryness and hair loss. Luckily, Mike Safely's "Witches Brew" (aka "Camelid Skin Mix") proved effective.

Then something happened to Zobel's back leg, so that it wobbled when he walked. As we were preparing to take him to the vet to examine the leg, Zobel choked on the pellets we used to lure him inside the trailer! The scheduled trip became an emergency, and Zobel had to be intubated (tube jammed down his throat to clear the blockage). From then on, he couldn't eat dry pellets without choking. We had to house and feed Zobel separately, with wet food. Luckily, he was just as eager to eat soggy grain as he was to eat dry pellets. However, the vet said his leg wobbled due to a torn tendon, and that could not be fixed.

Zobel had gotten quite fat and pot-bellied when he was able to steal the girls' and then Rider's food. But after he choked and had to be housed and fed separately, we managed to return him to a healthy weight. However, after a couple of years, he became less enthused about eating soggy food, and often didn't finish it. I tried using less water, and then he ate it all, but would sometimes choke. He started losing weight. He walked slower, with his wobbly back leg. Then I started seeing him choking in the pasture. Usually half an hour after his grain for breakfast. Then he started choking on grass, not at first, but when he tried to chew his cud. So he stopped grazing and just stood there, watching. He got thin.

The last straw for poor Zobel was that he rather suddenly went blind. I noticed his once-clear brown eyes had a grey fog in them. In fact, one eye was grey all over! The brown iris had disappeared! I noted he could merely detect light or shadow on that side. The vet thought the lens had become fogged, then somehow detached, and had moved in front of the iris! The other eye was also foggy, but just in the pupil.

When we realized Zobel could neither eat nor see, it was time. We had hoped for one last shearing of his soft and beautifully-colored fiber, but he couldn't survive until June. He was euthanized on April 15, 2013, obediently getting into the trailer just like Whoopie, before embarking on his final journey.

Poor, unlucky Zobel. I hope at least some of your time with us was pleasant!

Girlfriend started acting sick two weeks before Christmas 2009, right after a 10-day cold spell that had temperatures as low as 8 degrees F at night. The vet thought she had pneumonia, so we treated her for that, but it didn't help. She stopped eating and drinking. While trying to force her to drink on Christmas afternoon, she suddenly died in Joe's arms.

Dave Stendal helped load Girlfriend's body into our 2-horse trailer and Joe took her to Oregon State University for a necropsy, wracked with guilt for not keeping her warm and well during the coldest week we'd ever known here. But then again, her brother Finn seemed fine.

In a few days we got the results: lymphoma. Girlfriend had died of cancer! I had noticed swellings in her throat area, just below the jaw, over a year before. But not knowing goat anatomy, and because she did not act sick, I thought nothing of it. The vet had not noticed, either, so I didn't feel so bad. The only symptom had been that she would sometimes choke on her pellet feed.

We had to have Girlfriend cremated, as OSU would not release her body to us otherwise.

We thought we'd never have another goat as sweet as Girlfriend. Finn was lonely and upset; he had not understood that Girlfriend was sick, let alone dead. She was only 5 years old.

Then Toni Johnson told us she had a goat she rescued from near-starvation a year before. We introduced the much-smaller girl goat to Finn gradually. At first she was shy, and he was still upset and a bit aggressive. But within a week they began to get along, and Finn decided she was pretty nice. I named her "Ginger Peachy," a term used by a TV personality when I was a child to describe something really good. We call her Ginger for short, and she is even sweeter than Girlfriend ever was. So this ending turned out happy after all.