Gosh, when was this? Last year, towards the end of the summer (or what we had of it!), I took a walk with our son across some fields. I was very brave considering there were cows in one field and horses in another as I'm scared of both. (if I'm honest I'm scared of anything bigger than a dog if it has four legs! lol) Well, I'd just opened a gate into a field when round the corner came this Llama trotting towards me. I shot back and closed the gate quick, but then found myself trapped between the horses in one field and the Llamas in the other! lol
I think it was about ten years ago, but it could have been a bit more now. I had gone to watch cricket and during the lunch interval went for a walk to have a look at the old zoo site. I was cutting through between Watersplash and The Corner to walk up the sloping path to the sea side of the zoo site and there it was to my right! Come to think of it it was maybe in the mid to late nineties, so more than ten years ago.
I am fairly used to Llamas as I worked with them and Guanacos at Sewerby Zoo (even if I was the worst zoo keeper in the country) and I spend so much time there now that I'm often in close contact with them especially when the two in the zoo itself and the Alpaca are being walked from their daytime paddock to their night pen. I've never been charged by one though!
They can spit when they are annoyed or afraid. Sewerby's Llamas mostly reserve spitting for each other unless a visitor has done something irritating. The Guanacos would spit at you if you stepped too close to them while they were eating the concentrate you'd just lovingly put down for their delectation!
