A Challenge accepted.

Sue and I were sitting watching some drivel on the television late last evening when I received a series of bizarre e-mails on my Blackberry. The e-mails in question had been sent by a certain Gary Sanders from Popham Alpacas down in deepest grockle hunting Cornwall.

One can only assume that a fair amount of moonshine had been consumed down in Cornwall, perhaps a celebration of something medieval, a burning at the stake maybe? Anyway suffice it to say that these e-mails were all amusing in varying degrees.

The gist of them was that Gary was issuing a challenge directly to the core of the Mighty Patou herd. Not only that but he was rude, insulting and somewhat arrogant. Either that, or as I mentioned earlier, he was simply drunk.

I urge you all to read the challenge that was thrown down, it really is rather funny. http://www.pophamalpacas.co.uk/blog/ is the link that will take you down to Popham where they have a lovely little website and cute as a button blog going on.

Obviously being the head of the Mighty Patou Tribe I conferred with the leaders of the herd prior to making my decision. It was a short discussion involving the matriachs of the herd and three in particular, Priscilla, her daughter Bobby and Bobby's daughter, Poppy. The three older hair-trigger spit merchants. It didn't take long before anger rose within them and the spit flew. They claimed that they had never been so insulted and assured me that they were a powerful family and without troubling the rest of the herd, they could cover the challenge from within the family.

A word of warning to poor old Gary here, Priscilla and her family are a bit like the herd mafia. They are the enforcers here, they don't take any shit from anyone. They are the mighty core within the mighty herd. They are the lifeblood of the herd, they are very, very powerful. They scare me a little bit.

So back to this challenge, Gary is suggesting that he has brown cria to rival those within the mighty Patou herd. He says that at the SWAG show next year we should come together, head to head in the junior brown classes. He bizarrely thinks that he can win! The even stranger thing is that he is making this challenge before his show team has been born. I think there must be a fair amount of tin in the water down there.

Still, no problem, we will wheel out the big guns in repsonse to this silly challenge and I am prepared to reveal the opposition today, for they HAVE been born and are thriving within the protective midst of the Patou herd.

Patou Ruby May is now 5 weeks old and is a powerhouse. Her mother, Bobby, is the daughter of Wessex Mateus, he in turn is a son of the legendary Purrumbete Highlander. Did you know that Gary? Did you know that Ruby May was the great grand daughter of the magnificent Highlander? No? No I thought not. Not only that but Ruby May's father is a certain Lillfield Jack of Spades. Mmmmmm, having second thoughts now are we big boy?

To cover the challenge from the junior male side we are wheeling out Patou Resilient. At only a week old and born slightly premature, Resilient is the smallest member of the mighty Patou herd. Small he may be but Mighty he surely will be!

You see Resilient is the first son of the awesome Patou Poppy. Poppy took a first place at the Bath and West two years ago, when there were over 450 animals being shown. She went on to take rosettes at the Futurity and the SWAG show as an intermediate. She is the daughter of Bobby (see above) and the legend that is ATA Cambridge Centurion, a behemoth in the black alpaca world. Not only that but little Resilient is also the son of the mighty Lilyfield Jack of Spades of Inca.


You see, we may just be a small herd in the south of Wiltshire (actually, numbers wise the Popham herd has four times as many alpacas as the the Patou herd) but we have a great big heart. We don't fanny around with our matings, a lot of thought goes into them. We are serious about what we do.

Enough said. Challenge accepted. There's going to be an ass whupping!