From the Archives:  May 2012– Janet Reno Goes Rogue

Weekends are busy affairs here at the Lazy Lamb Ranch, mostly because both Jake and I have full time jobs.   So what most ranches spread over the course of five or six days, we cram into two with the occasional evening.  This weekend was supposed to be easy–put the finishing touches on the MooBahBah food cart, fix some fencing issues around the ranch and hopefully get some work done on the house.

To say it went off the rails would be an understatement.

On Friday evening, my new neighbor Carl stopped by.  Carl bought the ranch to the west of us–an absolutely beautiful horse property encompassing some 60 acres, many of which are irrigated pasture.  Carl owns several businesses in Twin Falls and the new house is going to be a weekend place.  If I were forced to live in Twinghanistan, I would sure as hell have a place outside of it, too.  Anyhow, like I said, Carl is a very nice guy and also happens to own zero horses.  He has taken a liking to our sheep, which is especially lucky because our lambs seem to have taken a liking to his front yard.  The other day I was driving home from work and noticed that there was an 8-pack of lambs grazing in his lawn while he and his wife were doing some yard work.   This is pretty typical.  So when Carl came over on Friday evening and asked if we’d like to put the flock on his land, I was pretty excited.  He has several fenced paddocks that all offer terrific grazing and he knows our program and was quick to point out that he doesn’t use any sort of herbicides, etc., and neither did the previous owner of ten years, which is perfect.  Carl even fixed the electric wiring he has running between rails so that that flock would be secure.  Carl should get Neighbor of the Year.  But lets be honest.  A man wants a little wool running around his property, given the chance.

Jake came over Saturday morning.  It was very cold and sleeting with intermittent snow, a steady wind and the ground was wet with mud.  I used Phil to round up the flock into the main area, then began to push them out the front gate.  Jake led the flock with the grain bucket, a strategy we call “Beast Master” because whomever has the green grain bucket instantly becomes The Beast Master, able to control the flock however he wants.  Out they went, one after another, all but ewe #90 and her lamb.  90 decided she wasn’t interested in what we were selling and went the other way.

You should know that as odd as it sounds, livestock tend to have distinct personalities.  For instance, suffolk ewe #66 is extremely personable, will actually leave the flock to come say hi to you and loves to be scratched on the head.  Ewe #112 won’t come near you, even with a grain bucket.  Ewe #69 will charge a dog in heartbeat, lowering her head like a woolly battering ram and hitting the gas pretty hard.  And #90, the ewe in question, cannot be contained and is not duped into your ploys.  She looks at you with very beaty eyes, definitely calculating.

I directed Phil to cut her off and bring her back and Phil put a little too much mustard on it and ended up chasing her all over the paddock.  Phil has a tendency to get over excited at 8 months and instead of “pushing” or “pressuring” the flock, he goes straight at them. This can create a lot of chaos and panic which only makes Phil more excited.

And here’s where the train jumped the tracks.

While Phil was in hot pursuit, flying around the pin like a fur missile, #90 running full steam but not sure where she was going, me hammering the whistle and trying to get Phil to back off, Kate yelling at him to no avail, there was a breach in security protocol.  A serious breach.  A 7 foot tall breach.  Janet Reno, guardian llama, saw an opportunity and took it.  Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as she galloped straight out the gate, hanging a hard left and up the driveway.  She paused briefly, as if to consult the wind and her guardian ancestors, then promptly hit the gas and ran off down the road like she had just turned the corner at Churchil Downs and winning this race was the difference between a life of breeding and an alfalfa cake or a trip to the jerky factory.  And she did not let off the gas.

Typically, when sheep get out, they make it all of about 6 feet from the gate before they simply stop and start grazing.  They have no ambition, no desire, to plans.  But Janet Reno is different.  Apparently she has had enough of a life of captivity and was not about to negotiate any terms of return.  Within seconds, she was hundreds of yards down the  road, running at full tilt while her upper body stayed completely still, running the way only a llama who just smelled freedom can.  Jake immediately walked after her, not sure what he was going to do.

Janet continued on her way until she stopped dead in her tracks in the middle of the road, about 300 yards from our driveway.  She suddenly began what we call her Ewok scream, a god-awful noise that she makes while her lips flap wildly around and her tongue sticks out and vibrates.  She does this whenever she identifies a threat.  Typically it’s deer on the property or a neighboring dog.  In this case, however, it was a piece of yard art in my neighbor’s yard.  A sculpture that looks sort of like a giant cheese wheel and sort of like Charlie Tuna.  Either way, Janet didn’t dig it and started screaming at it while Jake slowly gained ground.   Kate had got in her car and was circling around the loop the other way, in order to cut Janet off.   And I was about 100 yards behind Jake.  Janet then saw Jake coming and became interested in the grain bucket, lowering her horribly awkward neck and walking towards him.  But it was not to be.  A pickup pulled out of a driveway and actually turned towards Jake and the llama.  I tried to waive at the pickup, signaling to him that he should go the other way since we do live on a loop and it’s a total wash, but he wouldn’t have it and continued towards the delicate peace talks.  Janet didn’t dig that, either, and continued on her way away from the ranch.   Jake chased after her and so did the truck.  I headed back to the ranch to push the flock off the road and back onto our property.

As odd as this may sound, this sort of thing isn’t that out of the ordinary where I live.  There are a lot of horses and livestock and typically you learn to be patient as a motorist and just understand that sometimes you have to wait while a flock of 1000 sheep crosses the highway, or a few horseback riders hog the road.  But this guy apparently couldn’t be bothered as he continued to push Janet further and further down the road, trying to pass her.

Finally Kate showed up in front of her, blocking the road in her Volvo.  Janet stopped, clearly confused.  The pickup used the opportunity to go around the show, speeding onto the shoulder and down the road.  Jake caught up and restarted the negotiations.   Just then, our friend Brian happened to be driving by.  He runs Alpine Cattle with his brother Coach and thankfully he had a rope in his flatbed pickup.  After a few minutes of calming Janet down with the magical green grain bucket, Jake was somehow able to grab her harness, then tie the rope to her.  We walked her all the way home and collected the sheep who had made it all of 20 yards before being derailed by fresh weeds and grass in their mad dash for freedom.  I guess I wouldn’t make it too far either if I was walking through a delicious salad bar while trying to decide where to go.

We put Janet back in the paddock and she was clearly not happy about it and not happy that we were moving the sheep along the side of it towards Carl’s and away from her.  We got to Carl’s place and drove the flock into his first paddock.  Just then, Brian came running through the yard, laughing heartily. “Did someone maybe forget to lock the gate?”  I looked at Kate and it was confirmed.

Janet Reno had once again escaped justice and was once again totally rogue.

This time, however, she had run west, though a few horse pastures until she walked through a gate into a very large pasture which we then shut behind her.  At least she was contained.  The old Grain Bucket Magic wasn’t working–Janet had become wary of our ploys and wouldn’t come anywhere near us, trotting from one end of the pasture to the other.  “Fuck that,” Jake said as we walked back to the ranch.

Three more times we went over there but simply couldn’t get her roped.  The fourth time she had meanwhile been driven by the ranch owner into a very small pin.  Jake and I would force her into a corner and try to grab her harness but she was very quick, her giant but beady eyes nervously eying us every second.   Finally, Jake got her in a head lock, his arm around her giraffe neck.  I grabbed the harness while reaching for the lead rope in Jake’s hand, both of us laughing, Janet snorting and pissed.  Suddenly Janet gave some sort of mini Ewok snort, dug her hooves in and slipped her harness.  More agitated than ever, she was now totally irate and had become the equivalent of an angry elk pinned by post-and-rail fencing.

I tried the headlock maneuver and she took me down with a swift head flick.  Jake tried it again and was drug about 10 yards before she dumped him on the ground.  After about 30 minutes of this, we just left her with a bucket of water and variety of choice words.   We briefly discussed a strategy Jake called “Prom Date” where we crushed up a bunch of Advil PM and fed them to her in a grain bucket but I pointed out that just like Jake’s prom date, there’s no way we were going to be able to move that beast once she was down.  We decided we’d come back the next day with Brian and Coach, a lasso, maybe some tranq darts or maybe just a rifle.  It was really up to her.

The next day, we made our way over and Janet was not at ease.  She has worn a small path in the pin from pacing.  We went straight to work, going against the advice of several websites and lassoing her leg.  She was stuck all right, and promptly spat on Coach’s face.  When llamas spit, it’s not actually spittle.  It’s vomit.  And it stinks.  We immediately removed said lasso and left her be for a few minutes while we circled the wagons.  We formulated a plan and I rode Don Johnson down the street to my neighbor’s house, Bill.  Bill has several horses and is a really nice guy.  I had recently helped him out by chainsawing a tree into movable pieces, so I figured maybe he’d be willing to help us out.

Bill drove his old ranch truck with a massive cab-over camper on it and 16 foot horse trailer through the large paddock and backed that battleship up through two narrow gates right up to Janet’s pin.  Three of us then jumped into the pin and basically corralled Janet into the trailer.  It was actually pretty easy–she had ridden in trailers before and clearly was not afraid, jumping right in.  We shut the door and Bill drove her down to our ranch, parking the truck square in the middle of our pasture.  We let Janet out and she seemed to almost be relieved, immediately chomping on some weeds and prancing around.  We then latched the gate.  Twice.

Lesson learned:  Don’t ever let a llama with a shitty attitude off the property unless you want to spend the better part of the weekend getting her back.