Baby Llama

A couple weeks ago, Jeff, Sable, Oz and I headed to the KC Zoo on a beautiful day. After watching the crazy polar bear do his EVERY day ALL day lap swimming around the rock in his pool, we headed over to the carousel. After a ride, Sable took off towards the deer and llama area. Jeff and I were watching the llamas for a few minutes, and I was loudly complaining (to Jeff because there was NO one else around) that it really seemed unfair that something like 10 llamas share a very small pen while our crazy polar bear (I really can't say that enough) has an ENORMOUS multi-million dollar enclosure all to himself.

The llamas seemed really agitated, in fact at one point they were actively spitting at us just for standing there. Suddenly Jeff noticed, "That llama is giving birth!" Yep, one of the llamas had a baby llama just hanging out of her. There was absolutely nobody around, no keepers in sight. So Jeff took off to find somebody. The other llamas were so agitated that they kept trying to jump on and then sit on the mama. We were seriously worried the baby would come out and be totally trampled to death. Jeff came running back saying he could only find the carousel operator and she was radioing a keeper. After another tense few minutes a keeper came running and tried with little success to get all the other llamas herded out of one side of the pen so she could close off the gate to the mama. Another keeper came and they were able to do it together. Literally ONE minute after they closed that gate, the baby llama came out and plopped on the ground.




Jeff declared (to me) that we should get to name the baby and that its name should be Kermit, because it had such wobbly frog legs. And I think he's right, we SHOULD get to name it - the poor thing would have been smooshed for sure if he hadn't gotten the keepers to come.

We'll be keeping our eye on you Kermit!