by Alan Parks
The fences are being reinforced to ensure that the boys cannot escape and get in with the girls again. For Lorna and I, this adventure into alpaca breeding has never been easy and our hearts continue to take a pounding even after all these years.
Chapter 32
The Eyes have it
One of the best things about living deep in the Andalucian hills is the privacy we have. It is no problem to walk around in the height of summer wearing nothing but a pair of underpants; you can almost guarantee no-one will see you, provided, of course, that we don’t have any guests. We wouldn’t want to inflict that on anyone.
At times it can seem a little bit spooky. In the winter, if we have the generator on in the evenings I usually head out into the darkness at about 11pm to turn it off. There can be a heavy mist, which means I can see no further than a few feet in front of me, topped by the fact that the only torch we have is powered by a wind-up handle and it shines about as far as I can reach with my arm.
At times like this, my heart does tend to run a bit faster than normal and my imagination goes a little wild. What if someone has broken in and is waiting for me in the barn? What if there are people outside? It’s even worse if the dogs are barking. Why are they barking? Is there someone there? Then, after I turn the generator off, there is silence and I stand and listen.
There are no lights as far as the eye can see. We are the only people crazy enough to live out here full time. On odd occasions, once the generator has been turned off, one of the local horses might have made his way outside our fence, and if I don’t know it is there, all of a sudden I hear a loud “NEIIIGHHHHHH!” It can scare the living daylights out of me and my brain clicks that was why the dogs were going mad. They seem to be able to sense it, even over the noise of the generator and through the thick mist.
Our bedroom is situated underneath an overhang built with arches, so at night no light gets into our room, and when the lights are off, it’s practically pitch black. In the summertime, because our guests use fans and we worry about our electricity, we sleep with the window open, to try and at least have a bit of fresh air in the room and make sleeping a possibility.
One night I stirred in my sleep and opened my eyes. There was a pair of red eyes staring up at me from by my feet.
“Shit!” I thought. “What’s that?”
Was I dreaming? Was I about to get eaten by a monster in my sleep? The eyes were looking directly at me, and my heart was beating hard. It didn’t feel like a dream, I was sure I was awake.
“Lorna!” I whispered. “Are you awake?”
It’s always a stupid question in the middle of the night, but it seems like the gentlest way to wake somebody up.
“What?” she asked, stirring and turning over.
“Open your eyes, and look down at my feet. Can you see anything?”
“No,” she said.
I don’t think she even looked to be honest.
“There are eyes looking at me, red eyes. Look again.”
She moved again and I could sense she was looking around.
“I can see some over on the side, by the window.”
I looked. Sure enough, there were more eyes. In fact, everywhere I looked there were eyes looking up at us.
“What the…”
“Turn the light on,” she whispered.
So I did.
“Bloody hell!” I said quietly as I looked around.
On every surface of our bedroom, there was a pair of eyes looking at us. It was the kittens. I don’t know how they found us; they must have been investigating the dogs’ area when they knew they were asleep, but here they were. All 10 of the kittens, sitting on our window sill, on the bed, on the dressing table. In fact, everywhere I looked there was a kitten and on the other side of our bedroom door were two cat-hating dogs.
“What do we do?” Lorna whispered.
“Errmmm…”
But before I had a chance to answer, the black kitten that we called Outsider let out a huge, long “MMMEEEEOOOOOWWWW!”
“Oh shit,” I said as I heard both Carlos and Miliko hit the floor in the living room and struggle to get a purchase on the slippery tiled surface.
Our bedroom door was only pulled to and usually, if we think we have a storm brewing we have to put something in front of the door to stop Carlos breaking in and trying to get onto our bed. I leapt out of bed and over to the door in one movement, far more athletically than a man of my build should do and threw myself against the bedroom door. By now the dogs had covered the ground and were scratching at the other side of the door, as I was leaning up against it to keep them out.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
Lorna was now out of bed and trying to gather the kittens up and put them out of the window, but they had sensed the dogs and scarpered to all four corners of the room, under the bed, on top of wardrobes and behind bedside tables. As fast as Lorna managed to catch one and throw it out, by the time she had the next one out the first one was back in and playing hard to get.
“This is ridiculous,” she said and sat on the bed.
I decided to try to get something to put in front of the door, to hold it shut, so I could help collect the cats, but as I leant forward to pick up a chair to block the door, I must have let the door open ever so slightly and Miliko and Carlos barged their way in. All hell let loose. Cats were scrambling up curtains and on to the tops of wardrobes and dogs were crying, whining and barking, jumping on the bed and scratching at the furniture.
“OOOHHH SHHIIIITTTT!” I shouted, mostly in frustration at myself for letting them in.
“Go and grab the leads,” I suggested to Lorna, my thinking being that we could at least restrain the dogs and then try and evacuate the cats from the apartment. Miliko was running in circles like a lunatic, going from one piece of furniture to another and Carlos was standing on his back legs, trying to get at a cat that was just out of reach on the dressing table, hissing and spitting for all it was worth. I looked all around the room and there were cats perched precariously, some with backs arched, hissing, whilst others were making themselves as flat as possible, trying not be seen.
Lorna returned with the leads and we physically had to drag the dogs away from the room, out of the apartment and up to the kitchen where Blue and Arthur sleep at night. Of course, by that time Blue and Arthur had heard the commotion and were on high alert when we brought Carlos and Miliko in. It was a job to keep them all in, but we managed and then we headed back down to try to remove the cats.
The cats were understandably shaken up, so it was a mammoth task to round them up and get them out.
By the time we had finished, the sun was starting to come up and both Lorna and I were covered in cat scratches, with blood dripping down our arms. Strangely enough the kittens have never ventured back down to our apartment.
Well, not that we know of…
Chapter 33
A Happy Ending?
As you can imagine, the last thing we wanted to concentrate our minds on now was the impending arrival of another cria, but that was what we had to prepare for.
Bermuda was due to give birth any time from mid-September onwards and she was as big as a house. She was so big that before Miles had been born Lorna and I were debating whether or not Bermuda might actually have her baby before Lily.
Well, since we know that alpacas give birth in the mornings, we had been continuing to get up at first light to check on Bermuda and then periodically checking on her throughout the day, usually until between four and five in the afternoon. Then we’d relax a bit if it looked unlikely that she would give birth. If we didn’t have guests, Lorna and I would take ourselves upstairs and treat ourselves to an hour of what we call ‘shit TV’- something like A Place in the Sun or Come Dine with Me.
At 7.30 one evening, after watching an hour of TV, we came downstairs and I casually walked over to the window to check on Bermuda. There she was sitting on the floor and next to her, sitting upright, was a white cria
.
“There’s a baby!” I said to Lorna.
“What?”
“There is a BABY!” I said again. “Grab a towel.”
“WHAT? I don’t understand.” Lorna just looked bewildered. Then it clicked. “Oh my God! Bermuda’s had her baby. Oh my God!”
By the time she had gathered herself together I had the towel and the iodine in my hands and we were out of the gate to go and welcome the new baby.
We could see that the new arrival that was already sitting up next to Bermuda looked practically dry and the placenta was already on the ground. I approached them and the cria jumped up to its feet immediately; a good sign.
Bermuda is always a protective mother and she was a little perturbed by our presence, so we quickly checked the umbilical cord, sprayed it with iodine and checked the sex. It was a girl. She wasn’t huge, considering the size Bermuda had been, but weighed a healthy 7kg. The only slight issue was that there was a bit of excess umbilical cord hanging down, but it wasn’t bleeding. We tied it off using a piece of thread, just to prevent any infection from getting up in through the wound.
Once again we retreated to a distance to watch and wait while the new baby looked for her first meal. I went off with the placenta to find a place to bury it. When I returned Lorna was in floods of tears.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m just so scared something will go wrong and we will lose this one too.”
“Let’s just watch her, she looks good and strong, and we know Bermuda is a good mum.”
Within minutes we were pleased to see the cria searching for the milk, although at that moment Bermuda was more interested in getting herself some food. Bermuda has never had an issue feeding babies, but of course there is always a first time.
After a while I said to Lorna, “Let’s just get them in and check her milk, just to be sure.”
We took them into the stable, got hold of an unhappy Bermuda and I popped underneath to check her udder.
In stark contrast to Lily, who had been incredibly difficult to get any milk from, Bermuda’s milk was almost gushing. I hardly had to squeeze at all. I don’t think I can put into words how happy that made me.
Due to the time of day we were losing light fast, so we decided to put the generator on and set up our portable flood-light, so the little one had some extra time before dark to get a decent amount of that precious colostrum into her stomach.
During the evening Lorna and I witnessed more than one feeding, and although we were both still nervous this arrival seemed to be going so much more smoothly than most.
We were weighing the cria every other day and on day 2 she weighed the same as her birth weight which was good, because they always drop a little on the first day, and then she steadily gained weight every time we weighed her.
On the fourth evening, we were out slightly later to feed the animals and it was almost dark. By this time the little girl had gained strength in her legs, and she was learning how to run. This is something that young alpacas do as dusk descends and it is called pronking. I don’t think that there is a more joyful sight in the natural world than seeing an alpaca cria pronk at dusk. It’s like they have to get rid of a load of pent up energy and they bomb backwards and forwards in the paddock and sometimes their back legs go too fast and they kick up in the air. It’s beautiful. When we saw that, we realised how different this situation was to that of little Miles. This cria was healthy and strong and doing all the right things. Miles had never quite been like that.
The next person on our list to name a cria was Russ. Russ is a supporter of Brighton and Hove Albion, which is pretty apt considering that’s where we lived before we moved to Spain, and he also lives in Spain. Brighton’s mascot is a seagull and the Spanish word for seagull is gaviota, so that is her name. In full it is Sunshine Gaviota, but we call her Gabi.
Since Gabi was born we have had our first lie-in in four months and we’ve also spent hours just sitting and watching her run around in the evenings. She’s putting on lots of weight, eating hay already and running around as though her life depends on it.
Occasionally we catch Lily telling her off, or giving her a little nip, and it makes us a little sad that we have never seen her raise a healthy baby, but maybe for Lily it just isn’t meant to be. Hopefully she will have an enjoyable retirement.
Now all we have to do is wait for Cassandra…but that’s another story.
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Bermuda and Gabi
Also by Alan Parks
Also Now Available
The fourth ‘Seriously Mum’ book
The Alpaca That Saved Christmas
The first children’s book by Alan Parks
Contacts and Links
We welcome contact from anybody interested in hearing more about our life, or about alpacas in general.
Email:
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You can find me on Facebook here:
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If you would like to visit us and the alpacas here in Andalucia,
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Acknowledgments
Thank you to Lorna, who is always game for me to write about our life and share some of our private moments with people from all over the world. Also, thank you once again to my Mum, for her continued support of our crazy life here.
Thanks to Heather and Rick, and Zoe for the hard work in helping make this book presentable for readers.
Many thanks to Sue Clamp for checking the Spanish.
I would also like to thank Victoria Twead (once again) for the support and help in publishing this latest book. In August 2013, Victoria and I set up a group on Facebook, called We Love Memoirs. Over the last 14 months we have seen that group grow and flourish into a group of authors and readers, people who genuinely call each other friends. I would like to thank every member of WLM for making the group what it is.
Do come and join us!
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About the Author
Alan Parks was born in Eastbourne in 1978, and moved to Andalucia with his partner, Lorna, in 2008. Since then they have endured good and bad times in equal measure.
In 2012 Alan published his first memoir, Seriously Mum, What’s an Alpaca? which quickly became an Amazon bestseller. The sequel, Seriously Mum, Where’s that Donkey? soon followed.
Seriously Mum, How Many Cats? is the third in the Seriously Mum series.
Stay at the The Olive Mill
If you would like to come and meet our beautiful alpacas in Andalucia and stay at The Olive Mill, come and find our Facebook page and get in touch.
We would love to meet you, and we promise you
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Copyright Notice
Text © Alan Parks, 2014
Cover by Noemi Gambini, 2014
Published by Alan Parks, 2015
First Edition
The author reserves all rights. No part of this ebook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Also available in Paperback and Large Print editions.