Llamas are “in” – they have been for a couple of years. Lots of llama t-shirts, mugs, posters, pins, rubber stamps – you name it, you can find it these days. I even bought a little stuffed llama when I was in Peru; it seemed the thing to do.
YA came to me three weeks ago after finding a local llama “petting farm” in Waconia (she found it on TikTok). For a fee (relatively small in my estimation), you could pet llamas, feed llamas and even take a trail walk with a llama. With nothing else on our horizon, we figured why not. It’s apparently quite popular so it took a couple of weeks between contacting them and getting a reservation. We headed out on Wednesday, the farm being about 30 minutes from our house.
First there was a “llama lesson” with interesting facts about llamas as well as how to tell a llama from an alpaca. There was another mother/daughter scheduled during our time slot, but they had shown up early; YA and got the llama guy all to ourselves. This was fabulous because I could indulge myself by asking as many questions as I wanted. Usually when there are stranger involved, I hold back (go ahead, laugh). We also brought a bag of baby carrots. Some of the llamas thought this was wonderful, some of them didn’t. My llama (Pacesetter) was extremely leery of the carrots, but YA’s llama (Mocha) couldn’t get enough.
The trail walk was about 20 minutes – without the snow, it would be faster, but the llamas weren’t in a hurry and it was just the four of us (YA, me, Pacesetter and Mocha) so we didn’t have to worry about keeping up with anyone else (or hold anyone else back). We were there altogether about 90 minutes and the llama guy said we should come back in early May when there are baby llamas (crias) for petting and photo ops. We came right home and emailed them for that reservation!
When was the last time you visited a zoo/petting farm?