Wild Spirits

by Rosa Jordan

  Working at Red River Ranch, she decided, might help her get used to being around people again. It wouldn’t be like a regular job. She could volunteer for just one day a week, and if she got too stressed out she could slip away to some quiet corner of the ranch and calm down with the animals.

  • • •

  When the McDermonts, who owned Red River Ranch, accepted her as a volunteer every Friday, Danny agreed to come out to the farm after school to check on the animals.

  He was twelve by then, and as far as Wendy knew, things hadn’t got any better for him. In fact, they may have got worse. He was in Grade 7, and what she remembered of Grade 7 was that there was always a lot of mean teasing and outright bullying. But there was no more she could do about that than he could do about her own fear. It was something both of them would have to deal with.

  At Red River Ranch, Wendy was first put to work looking after hoofstock. Karen showed her the ropes. Wendy was just getting to know and like the feisty redhead when Karen quit. She was about to start college in Memphis, which was too far away for her to continue working as a volunteer at the ranch.

  After Karen left, Wendy was mostly alone with the hoofstock, which suited her just fine. Most volunteers wanted to work with exotic animals, either that or an easy job like guiding visitors around the park. They didn’t like the barnyard chore of shovelling manure and feeding the park’s sheep, goats, burros, zebras, antelope, deer, and llamas. But Wendy was completely happy looking after hoofstock and never complained.

  However, once Mr. and Mrs. McDermont found out how much experience she had with local wildlife, and heard from Karen how helpful she had been with the baby lions, they often called on her to help with other animals. Wendy would be working away on the back side of the pasture, covered with sweat and dust, when she’d look up to see one of the other volunteers running toward her, calling, “Wendy, come here! Mrs. McDermont wants you to feed the lemur.” Or, “Wendy, Mr. McDermont wants you to clean the cougar enclosure.”

  Wendy didn’t mind any of the work assigned to volunteers except guiding people through the park. Her favourite job was working in the nursery, patiently trying to get some orphan baby animal to swallow a few drops of milk. There, alone with the animals and away from people, she forgot her fears and was totally happy.

  Only when classes were held at Red River Ranch on emergency care for injured animals or something else of interest did she voluntarily join in a group activity. Mr. McDermont teased her about the way she took every opportunity to learn more about animal care. “What do you plan to do with all this knowledge you’re gaining, Wendy? Open your own animal park in competition with mine and put me out of business?”

  Wendy shook her head. “Don’t worry, Mr. McDermont. I’m more interested in rehabilitating animals and getting them back into the wild.” She hesitated, and added, “The state is going to start requiring people to be licensed to do wildlife rehab. I was thinking that if I took all the classes offered here at Red River Ranch, and you wrote me a recommendation —”

  Mr. McDermont interrupted. “Girl, you already know darn near as much about native wildlife as I do. All you’ve learned here is to work with some of these exotic species.”

  “Oh, I’ve learned a lot from your classes on first aid and wildlife diseases and tons of other stuff,” Wendy assured him.

  “Well, any time you want to apply for that rehab license, I’ll be glad to write you a letter of recommendation,” Mr. McDermont promised. “You probably should apply for a USDA license, too.”

  “What’s a USDA license?” Wendy asked. “And why would I want one?”

  “United States Department of Agriculture,” Mr. McDermont explained. “You’d need one if you ever decided to do educational programs using live animals. Since you’re working here, and we’re USDA-licensed.” He snapped his fingers. “Easy. You just let me know when you need those letters of recommendation.”

  “Thanks,” Wendy said, giving Mr. McDermont a wave as he headed off to talk to another volunteer.

  She had barely stuck the pitchfork back in the pile of manure to heave it over the fence into the compost before Mr. McDermont turned around and jogged back to where she was working. “Wendy,” he called. “Something I forgot to tell you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My wife said you said something about wanting a llama.”

  “Well, sort of,” Wendy said. “But they’re pretty expensive and —”

  “I know a guy who wants to get rid of a couple. He offered them to us, free. But you can see,” Mr. McDermont said, waving his arm toward the pasture, “we don’t need another llama. Certainly not another male.”

  “A pair? And he’s giving them away?” Wendy asked incredulously.

  “Not exactly a pair. Two brothers. Says he’ll trailer them over himself.”

  Wendy hesitated. She probably should ask Kyle first, but hadn’t she mentioned getting llamas before? And hadn’t he said it was okay?

  “Why is the guy is giving them away?” she queried. “Is there something wrong with them?”

  “Well, he did say they’re break-out artists.”

  “Oh, that won’t be a problem for us,” Wendy said confidently. “We just finished fencing our place.”

  14

  MACHU AND PICCHU

  As soon as the llamas were delivered, Wendy called Danny, who said he’d come out right away. While waiting for him to arrive, Wendy said to Kyle, “You know, it takes him two hours to walk from his house to here. Yet he comes out every Friday to do the afternoon feeding, and usually helps around on weekends, too.”

  “Aren’t you paying him?” Kyle asked.

  “I tried,” Wendy said. “He wouldn’t take any money because he said being around animals is fun, not work. But I was wondering, could we buy him a bike? That way it wouldn’t take him so long to get here. He could even come after school if he felt like it.”

  “Sure,” Kyle said. “No twelve-and-a-half-year-old should be without wheels.” He paused, then backtracked. “Actually, maybe it’s not such a good idea. Given how mean his old man is, if he thought Danny had got a bicycle from a cop, he’d probably give him some grief about it.”

  Reluctantly, Wendy agreed. But a little later, as she, Kyle, and Danny stood by the fence watching the llamas sprong across the field, she had a better idea.

  “It’s like they’re on pogo sticks!” Danny exclaimed, and laughed out loud as the two llamas bounced from one side of the pasture to the other, landing on all four legs at once in a way that sent them “spronging” into the air.

  “You were so much help with us this summer when we were building fence and planting trees,” Wendy said. “We decided that one of the llamas should be yours.”

  As Danny turned wide, disbelieving eyes on her, Wendy quickly added, “Your llama would have to live here, of course. And I wouldn’t want you to sell him. If you ever decided you didn’t want him, you’d have to give him back to me so he can stay here with his brother.”

  “But he would really be mine?” Danny asked. “My very own?”

  “Sure,” Wendy said. “That way, you could use some of the money you’ve saved to buy yourself a bike.”

  “Oh, yeah!” Danny agreed enthusiastically. “That’d be great!”

  “That one,” she pointed, “is Machu. The one over there is Picchu.” She turned to smile and Danny and noticed for the first time how much he had grown. He was now almost as tall as she was. “Which one do you want?”

  Danny was silent, watching the llamas. “They’re pretty wild,” he said at last. “I’d like to get to know them before I choose. I wouldn’t want one that didn’t like me.”

  “Of course not,” Wendy agreed. “They weren’t hand-raised and aren’t going to come to us right off. But I bet in a week we can have them coming to th
e fence to take treats from us. Just don’t ever go in that pasture with them by yourself, okay?”

  “Oh, I won’t,” Danny assured her. “They might have Male Berserk Syndrome.”

  “How did you know about Male Berserk Syndrome?” Wendy asked, surprised.

  “Read about it on the Internet,” Danny told her. “Male llamas don’t tolerate intruders in their space, especially other males. If a llama gets mad at a man, he might stomp him to death.”

  “That’s right,” Wendy said, wondering if the aggressiveness of some male llamas toward some men was one of the things Danny liked about them. Just as he had fantasies of training a pet llama to spit on kids who teased him, maybe he had fantasies of training one to attack the boys who bullied him.

  If so, Wendy could hardly criticize him, since it was partly for that aggressive instinct that she wanted llamas. She had never mentioned this to Kyle, just as she had not told him that the reason she wanted peacocks was because they set up a terrible racket if anybody approached the house. Llamas would provide similar protection from anyone attempting to cross the pasture. They were not noisy like the peacocks, but any strange man who tried to cross the pasture, day or night, was going to find himself face to face with two aggressive male llamas.

  • • •

  Kyle was not as fond of the llamas as Danny and Wendy were. They didn’t go berserk when he went into the field, but they weren’t friendly, and they had habits that he found annoying. “I don’t see the point in having hoofstock that doesn’t graze close enough keep the weeds down,” he grumbled, as he took the Weed Eater out of the garage. “I thought the main reason for getting the llamas was so I didn’t have this chore.”

  When he came in from the running the Weed Eater over the field, he was really mad. “Those darned llamas!” he complained to Wendy. “Instead of eating the weeds, they’re destroying the fruit trees we planted!”

  “Oh dear!” Wendy said. “I’ll get Danny to help me build them a pen this weekend.”

  “Well, make it one they can’t get out of,” Kyle muttered. “For all the good the pasture does, they might as well be running lose.”

  It was true that the llamas managed to escape from the pasture at least once a week. A neighbour would phone to say they were at his place and somebody better come get them. Kyle thought they kept escaping because Wendy forgot to close the gate. She thought he was the one who hadn’t checked to make sure the latch was down. It wasn’t until they’d had the llamas a month that they discovered that it wasn’t his fault or hers.

  Wendy had fed the llamas herself that morning, and double-checked to make sure the gate was fastened. She was indoors at the computer when the phone rang.

  “Wendy,” Kyle barked, “go get your stupid llamas!”

  “Where are they?” Wendy asked, and wondered, if they were out, how Kyle would know, since he was at work.

  “In the front yard!” Kyle yelled. “Can’t you hear the peacocks?”

  “Yes, but it’s only the postman they’re fussing at. I heard his car turn in.”

  “The llamas are out there, too. The postmaster just phoned. He said the llamas are holding the letter-carrier hostage! Go get them back in the corral!”

  “On my way!” Wendy quickly hung up and ran downstairs.

  Sure enough, there was the poor postman sitting in his car, surrounded by Wendy’s “guard animals.” Machu, lips puckered, stood at the driver-side window — a window which, Wendy noticed, was already slimed with green llama spit. Picchu was behind the car, blocking it so the postman couldn’t back out. The peahens ran around the lawn honking and screeching, while the peacock, his tail feathers spread in a royal fan, strutted back and forth in front of the car as if admiring his reflection in the chrome bumper.

  Wendy grabbed each of the llamas by the halter and pulled them away from the car. The postman quickly backed out. When he reached the highway, he rolled down his spit-slimed window and yelled, “You keep them vicious animals locked up, you hear? Or you’re going to have to go to town to get your mail!”

  “Yes sir!” Wendy called back. To Machu and Picchu, she said, “Bad boys!”

  But she wasn’t really angry. In fact, as soon as they were back in the pasture, she went into the house and got a carrot for each of them. Then she got some wire from the garage to double-fasten the gate latch which, she now understood, they had known how to open all along.

  “Now stay put,” she told the llama brothers. “Hoofstock is supposed to guard the pasture. You leave it to the peacocks to provide security in the front yard, okay?”

  She went back inside and phoned Kyle to let him know that she had rescued the postman, and the llamas were back where they belonged. “The rascals have figured out how to open the gate,” she explained. “I’ll try to get that new pen built this week.” She added, “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t realize when I got them that they’d be so much trouble. With such a big pasture to run in, I don’t know why they keep trying to get out.”

  “Ah, they’re not that much trouble,” Kyle said, in a tone that told Wendy he felt bad about having yelled at her. “If you shut me up someplace where I didn’t have a female companion, I reckon I’d want to break out, too.”

  • • •

  When Danny arrived after school, Wendy told him they would have to build a pen with a gate that had some special kind of lock the llamas couldn’t open.

  As Danny helped Wendy measure and mark the fence line for the new corral, he noted, “This pen will be smaller than the pasture. Do you think they’ll like it?”

  Wendy let the tape retract so they could move to the next section. “They’re going to like what I plan to put in it,” she told Danny, with a twinkle in her eye.

  “What?”

  “A girl llama.”

  “Really?”

  “I called Mr. McDermont to find out if he knew anybody who had one they wanted to get rid of cheap. He did, and I’ve already talked to the owner. As soon as we get this pen built, Dolly Llama is coming to keep our boys company.”

  “Dolly Llama?” Danny gave Wendy a quizzical look. “Isn’t that the name of a Buddhist preacher?”

  “Sort of. The head of the Tibetan Buddhist religion is called the Dalai Lama. He preaches peace and tranquility. Maybe having one of our llamas called by a name that sounds like his will help them stay calm, and not go around spitting at postmen.”

  Wendy turned to look at Machu and Picchu, grazing peacefully on the other side of the pasture. Half-joking, but half-serious, too, she said, “Our llamas ought to save their spit for people who want to hurt us.”

  15

  AMIMAL FARM

  Once the new corral was built, Machu and Picchu did stop breaking out. That might have been because they never figured out how to open the gate. Or maybe it was the female llama that made them content to stay put. Dolly Llama was not tan like them, but black and white. Danny said her colour reminded him of a soccer ball, and probably would have named her Soccer Ball if Wendy hadn’t already decided to call her Dolly Llama.

  “Just look at the way she bats those long eyelashes at the boys,” Wendy laughed. “She’s a total flirt.”

  Danny eventually chose Machu as his own. He loved the llamas, but didn’t spend all his time with them. There were also the peacocks to feed, and several nest boxes on the screened-in back porch containing various injured or orphaned wild animals. The number of baby animals to look after increased in the spring, since that’s when most wild animals are born.

  Wendy was still the person whom people in the area first thought of when they came across hurt and helpless wildlife. Some phoned, wanting her to come pick up the animal. Others drove out to the farm and dropped it off. Usually the ones Wendy got were ones that had been injured in some way, or orphaned when their parents were killed by dogs, cats, or huma
ns.

  All of this created so much work that Wendy had to give up her volunteer work at Red River Ranch. She occasionally went back to teach classes in wild animal care, the kind she herself had taken when she first started there, but most of her time was spent looking after animals at home.

  • • •

  One night Wendy woke to a thumping sound downstairs. That would be Kyle, who always worked the evening shift so he’d have a few daylight hours to do stuff on the farm. He usually got home a little after midnight. Wendy didn’t mind, since she also worked most evenings on her home computer, doing accounts for several local businesses that were too small to hire a full-time accountant. That was how she earned extra money to buy food for the animals and pay their vet bills. It was taking all Kyle could earn to pay the mortgage and their day-to-day living expenses.

  As the thumping continued, Wendy crawled out of bed, went to the top of the stairs, and called down, “Kyle? That you?”

  Instead of an answer, she heard Kyle yell, “Oh, drat! Come back here, you!”

  Wendy pattered down the stairs, where she found Kyle pursuing a frightened fawn around the living room.

  “Oh, poor baby!” Wendy cooed, catching the fawn as it tried to slip past her. “Where did you get her?”

  Kyle flopped down on the couch. “Somebody left it tied to the bumper of my patrol car, if you can imagine that! With a note saying it has been hand-raised and needs a good home, and would I please take her out to the Animal Farm.” Kyle glared at Wendy, sitting on the floor in her pajamas, holding the frightened fawn. “Get that, Wendy? They call this place the Animal Farm. You know what the Animal Farm is don’t you?”

  “Uh, a book by George Orwell?”

  “Yeah. About where the animals rebel against the humans and take over, and become dictators. In the end, the pigs are in charge and you can’t tell the people from the pigs,” Kyle grumbled. “Just like this place.”

  “Are you saying you can’t tell me from a pig?” Wendy teased. “Especially when we don’t even have any pigs?”