Monday, April 29, 2013

Shearing Day and Other Disasters...

Shearing day was Saturday. Before shearing, the alpacas looked like this:
         Fluffy Alapacas
 Afterwards.....not so much!
Alarmingly not-so-fluffy alpacas
Unflattering rear view
Yes, they make me giggle a bit, too.

Shearing day started out just fine.
The guy we bought the alpacas from generously offered to put our 3 in his trailer with his and drive them all to the shearers. He would arrive at noon on Saturday. My son, The Girl and myself would be going, the Darlin' Man is on a field exercise.
He arrived at noon, we loaded up our three with little problem (okay, Ana pitched a fit)  and then it was noticed the trailer had a flat tire. So, we unloaded ours and got water for his while he drove back to his house to get an air compressor.
Oh crap....the valve stem is busted....gotta go get another tire. Check all trailer tires...another tire has a busted valve stem.
So, he leaves to get new tires.
Returns, gets new tires on trailer, call shearers...they are okay with us being two HOURS late.
Reload my annoyed alpacas (Ana really pitched a conniption fit this time!).
He tells me to follow him over in my car. He has a friend and his son with him in his pick-up.
On TransMountain  Highway.
One third of the way up the mountain....my car blows up. Well, the radiator and every hose blows up.
With such force that it blew out part of the dash and scalding coolant sprays all over the interior of the car.
I get the car pulled over safely and put on the emergency brake and we all bail out.
I have no cell phone. Well, I have an old one, but it's broke, so, yeah.
It takes 30 minutes to flag someone down to get them to call me a tow truck.
An hour after that with no tow truck in sight, a policeman pulls over. HE calls the tow truck company who tells him they "got backed up". So he calls a different towing company and they show up in 15 minutes! (Thank you Officer Salazzar!)
The tow truck driver does a great job and gets us home about a half hour after that. (Thanks J.R.!)
I call the alpaca guy's cell phone and tell him the situation. He thought he lost us on the road!
And not only are the alpaca's sheared, he is almost all the way back to our place!
So....that was shearing day.

The ONLY bright spot in the day.....
Guess who was waiting for us when we got home?
NUGGET IS BACK!!!!


4 comments:

  1. Lamb,

    I'm happy to hear you made it home okay and you had a nice officer and tow truck driver to help you out. The alpacas look adorable shaved.
    Yay, Nugget's back! Nugget's been gone a long while, any ideas where Nugget disappeared to?

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    Replies
    1. We are SO happy Nugget is back! It appears she has been staying in the small barn next door that houses the neighbors sweet horse, Honey.

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  2. Glad Nugget came back home. Those are the kind of days that make you question the desire to ever get out of bed again.

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  3. I stopped by to tell you how much I appreciate your friendship. You are a good woman and I am proud to call you my friend. thanks for everything. Your friend always , the mohave rat

    ReplyDelete

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