I'm a born and raised city/suburb girl and don't know a thing about farm animals other than being able to identify them by name when I see them. Anything else about them is completely foreign. So of course it makes perfect sense that I want a llama. Or an alpaca. I'm not too choosy. Last night's episode of Dirty Jobs was "let's to disgusting medical procedures on llamas". And I learned some things. For instance, male llama's have upper teeth for the specific purpose of biting off the testicles of other males. Wow. Man. That is some harsh shit. I am so glad I'm not a male llama. I wouldn't want to be on either end of that deal. Another fun fact: I wasn't aware that to determine weather or not a llama is pregnant, one must shove their hand and ultra sound equipment up the animals ass. Not the first place I would look for a fetus. But then again, I'm no veterinarian. And really relieved that the vet is not my ob/gyn. Especially having to have it done while standing, staring at the wall, chained and drugged, in a corner completely shamed. Of course, if someone is going in there with a fist and equipment, drugged is probably a wise choice. (Are you all as anxious as I am to find out the kinds of hits my blog will be getting after this post? Me too!) This llama's name was Call Girl. Talk about being branded for life and born at a disadvantage! Her adolescent years must have been pure hell. And it turned out Call Girl was about 8 months pregnant. And since their gestation period is approximately 11 months (see? I learned); you'd think they would have just been able to eyeball her abdomen making the whole rectal exam kind of unnecessary. Of course, she could have been one of those llamas that doesn't realize she's pregnant and then one day out in the field, out pops a 20 pound cria (uh-huh, I was paying attention) that wobbles around and promptly spits in Call Girl's face. And Call Girl is all, "WTF??". How embarrassing. So, Mr. Farklepants and I have a quick exchange that goes something exactly like this:
Me: I think veterinarians go into this field just so they can stick they're hand up animal's asses.
Mr. Farklepants: It's why they stay.
For your work environment friendly viewing pleasure:
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Open Up And Say Llamahhhhhh...
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12 comments:
I am deeply, deeply suspicious of llamas. Why are their necks so long? And furry? And why must they spit and be so skitterish? And what's with all the llama drama?
Perhaps, what with all the testes biting and anal violation, they can't help but be unpleasant.
Shhh! I have a secret....I watch Dirty Jobs just so I can ogle Mike Rowe. That man is hot!
I watched that ep, too. Not surprised about how they do the ultrasound having grown up with a grandfather who owned a dairy farm. I'll never forget the first time I saw someone use one of those long gloves! *Shudder*
Normally a post that included such a graphic description of feeling up a poor, unsuspecting animal would make me cringe and maybe throw up a little. But when you tell the story, I'm too busy giggling to bother getting grossed out.
Hubs loves that show....but I am a squeamish girlie girl and there always hits a point that I have to leave the room. I'm glad I missed that episode entirely!
And yet again, I can't help but lend my animal "expertise." My dad is a large animal veterinarian, specializing in reproduction. What they did to that poor llama? My dad did that to cows for a living. Sort of.
A lady I work with raises alpaca. To find out if the females are pregnant, she puts a male in the same pen as a female and if the female spits in the male's face, it means she's pregnant. Talk about scientific!
alf~ Funny. That's how I let Mr. Farklepants know about all 3 of our pregnancies. ;)
shame on you for getting that ridiculous llama song stuck in my head :) llama, llama, something something llama, llama..duck!
Oh, well now I'm really glad I'm not a llama. Just the other day I was thinking how nice it would be, but I see now that their problems are bigger than mine. :-)
I ate llama while I was in Peru. I also had one spit at me. It was like he knew.
OMG..that was so funny and you can now be classified as insane for finding the YouTube video which was fabulous.
hrh~ I must give credit where credit is due. My oldest son found that about a year or so ago when he first started playing around on the internets. He was into finding songs about animals at the time. It is the funny.
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