Chapter Four:
Getting to Know Them
[Page 4]
There were tail movements which accompanied the ear activities.
A tail just hanging down was normal. If a llama felt the need for
self-assertion, the tail would go up. The further up, the more aggressive
the stance was becoming--until a curious reversal occurred. If the
llama flipped his tail all the way over, so that it was resting
on his back, that indicated submission.
Sometimes the llamas didn't come to a peaceful agreement, and the
next escalation could be spitting. The contents of the mouth might
be tossed out, or it might be a spray of saliva. Most of the spitting
we saw between the two males--and there wasn't much of it--occurred
over food. In the most drastic form of spitting, a llama spat a
smelly mess reminiscent of rotten compost. If things became that
serious, the llamas would stand around afterwards with their mouths
hanging open. We called this bad mouthing.
We had seen enough other llamas to know that ours were typical in
being moderate about spitting. People who hadn't been around llamas
often expected more spitting. It seemed that llamas had been given
some undeserved bad press.
Sometimes the two would chase each other around for a while, nipping
at each other. We heard a new sound: Tumbleweed would sometimes
screech. It was almost a whinny. They would fight for a while, and
then, with no obvious conclusion, the fight would be over and they
were buddies again. They fought almost every day for fifteen or
twenty minutes. We wondered if they would become more territorial
as they grew up.
How much of their behavior was learned, and how much was innate?
We had seen a three-hour-old baby at the Patterson's ranch, and
he was using the ear movements in exactly the same way adults did.
That suggested that much of the behavior was inborn.
We loved watching the llamas and trying to make sense of their actions.
Bill Franklin, a wildlife ecologist and owner of llamas and guanacos,
had written about llama language. He gave names to a variety of
body positions and sounds. "Aha, I just saw a HET!'' I would
exclaim. HET was short for horizontal ear threat, and we noticed
it often. The more sensitive we became, the more subtleties we saw.
The Aymara Indians of Lake Titicaca called llamas 'speechless brothers.'
We were realizing how very talkative they were.
We imitated them. "Mmmm,'' I said to Kelly.
"Mmmm,'' he replied.
"Mmmm?''
"Mmmm.''
We spoke llama now. Not, perhaps, with all the nuances of a native
speaker, but we were pretty fluent. We spoke llama, and we adopted
some llama traits. The pre-spitting threat was useful. We sniffed
gently to express curiosity or greeting.
Beyond our acting out, we experienced the world differently. We
had an additional perspective, the view of the llama. Or, at least,
our view of the llamas' view.
When I was nineteen and in Europe for the first time, an old Frenchman
told me, "When you are bilingual, then you are twice a person.''
As I struggled with French, I understood what he meant. There was
something about thinking in a different mode that gave me a fresh
outlook on life. I hadn't used my French in years, but I was again
twice a person.
|
