Monday 26 July 2010

Here is some news from Patouland.

Once again I am guilty of neglecting the blog. However, I have been busy. My ceaseless quest to find a car worthy of transporting the lovely Mrs S around has been long and arduous but is now OVER!
Pictured below is Sue's new mode of transport. After flirting with Volkswagens, Audis, BMWs, Jags and a whole load of other cars we finally found a beautiful sea blue Mercedes Benz. What a thing of beauty it is. Black leather, shiny buttons and knobs and with comfort in buckets it is eagerly awaited. Awaited? Awaited? What does he mean? Is it not there? I hear you gasp. No, it is not here yet, we have to wait until Friday for the Mighty Merc to arrive in Patouland. I am so excited about my new....I mean Sue is quite excited about her new car (which I am allowed to use when she is not using it..... she said I could) ......... hopefully......occasionally.....maybe.

Right, enough of that tosh, this is an alpaca blog and I will now provide you with alpaca news. Firstly, I have taken so many pictures of the Mighty Magnificent Seven (actually it is now eight but I have no photos of the latest arrival yet, tomorrow....maybe) altogether without mums and aunties that I am bored of trying. Here is a couple of photos I took yesterday of the little bundle of brownieblackness as they all hit the dust bath whilst the 'grown ups' were troughing breakfast.
From left to right; a black one and some brown ones and another black one and some more brown ones.

Some black and brown ones paying attention with some brown ones not paying attention.

Right, moving on. At the beginning of the year we bought a new field shelter. It is now located at the bottom of the hill about a hundred yards from where we feed the mighty herd. What happens is that we walk down to the shelter, collect a bucket of food and walk back up the hill where aforementioned food is placed into the troughs and the fluffsters then eat it. Why we do this I don't really know. Feed them down there or keep the food up here sounds much more sensible, anyway that's how it works at the moment, strangely. Whilst walking back up the hill with the food we are quite often 'mugged' by the herd. They are greedy little whatnots.

Sometimes, if I am taking something heavy down to the shed, like a piano or a fridge I will drive down. Similarly if I am bringing something heavy back up like, Oh I don't know, a full size rubber horse or a small aeroplane I will also drive down in the mighty Land Rover. I will then bring the food up in the Landy. The alpacas think this is great and race me back up the hill. In short it is an awesome experience and I love it! The other day I took the little camera with me (the mini Canon) and recorded the experience on the video mode of the camera. It has taken me three days to get the small video clip onto the blog, trust me I almost went to fetch my hammer several times. Anyhow I think it is now available for you to view. You too can experience 'running with the Mighty Patou!'. If it works that is?

If it doesn''t work just put Patou Alpacas into http://www.youtube.co.uk/ and you can see it there apparently.

PS If you look closely in the background on the right I did run one of them over. We're tough down here though, no harm done.

9 comments:

Zanzibah Alpacas said...

Fantastic....I've run with the Mighty Patou !!....and I've survived the experience....now...I don't know how to do that fancy work with the computer...so I can't compete !!....The Mighty Merc....looks....Merc'y' Mighty !!.....and in Midnight Blue...thats also fantastic !!....you have been missed...Im glad you didn't take the hammer to the computer..!!...Jayne

Knapper Alpakka said...

What a great video! Watched it several times.

Unknown said...

Good stuff Mark...glad that you only ran over the one...although I see that things have not always been quite as black and brown as this year's gang!!

Debbie, Barnacre Alpacas said...

Lovely video, you did well to get it on the blog, I can never get it to work anymore - they must've changed something!

Patou Alpacas said...

Thanks for the comments fellow Patou herd runners.

Barbara, I'm afraid you are mistaken. I have just checked our records to make sure and can confirm that there hasn't been a single Patou cria lighter than a medium fawn, ever. The white/light fawn alpacas seen in the video are long term agistees.
So, you see, the plan started five years ago and we have pretty much stuck to it as long as you can overlook the fawns who aren't quite brown enough!

Apple Vale Alpacas said...

There's a job for you at next years Grand National Mark! - and in answer to your question to me: although our herd sometimes seems like a full-time job, perhaps the advantage to a small herd is having a bit more time for mooching about with a camera!

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Made some English mistakes... Here it goes again...
----------------
O, Lord..., would you buy me a Mercedes Benz. My friends all drive porsches....
Cars are fun. Bought this year our second VW Transporter (the Long one with 200 horsepower). Just fun driving a van...
And for a hobby we have a vw Karmann Ghia Cabrio of 1970. Another way of having a holiday when you want one...
See you, big mighty Patouguy!
Leo (from The Lowlands).

Lucy said...

Great! I feel like I have run with the herd too. I have done it with ours - ON FOOT no less. You should try it. Running with a full feed sack in the snow is very invigorating I can tell you. They look mighty fine. As does SUE'S merc!