“Since animals don’t have verbal language, they must think differently than we do,” Linda commented.

“Yes, maybe more like how we use the right side of our brains, the non-verbal part. It will be interesting to see how Penelope talks with them.”

I had heard about Penelope Smith’s ability to communicate telepathically with animals. Intrigued, I invited her to come to our ranch. Now she and her husband, Michel Sherman, were on a trip that would bring them to Ashland.

When they arrived, I immediately liked them both. Penelope had a straightforward, cheerful manner.

“Do you want to start with the dogs or the llamas?” she asked.

“Let’s go out with the llamas, starting with Blossom, and then we can come in and have some tea while we do the dogs,” I suggested.

Blossom was just over two years old now, and pregnant for the first time. She was living alone in a temporary field because she’d had an abscess that the vet had removed surgically a few days earlier. He didn’t want her back in with the other llamas until the incision stopped draining. Now she was pacing her fence line.

“She doesn’t want to talk right now,” Penelope said. Blossom turned and looked at us. “Let’s start with another llama, and let her listen in. Then maybe she’ll have more to say.”

We turned around, and there were Posey, Renny, and Lally at the fence. Penelope was quiet for a few moments, and then began talking.

“Posey isn’t sure she wants to be here, on this planet. She isn’t really of this earth. She became curious about it, and came into a llama body with the attitude that she could always leave. Now she has become enmeshed, as we all do, in the things of this world.
“She has sometimes even thought about killing herself by dashing into a fence or running off a cliff, but she doesn’t know how to do it. She doesn’t like to be handled by people because it makes her feel more trapped in her body.” We hadn’t said anything to Penelope about how frantic Posey could become when handled, especially for veterinary procedures.

Kelly had come down from his video studio in time to hear Penelope’s comments about Posey.

“I never would have thought of anything like that,” he said, “but you’ve really captured the essence of her personality. She’s always been flighty and uncertain.”

I found Penelope’s comments delightful. They rang true. It was a stretch to think of a llama in this way, but something in me was resonating to Penelope’s words. I wanted to hear about every animal on the place.

Posey was standing with her back to us, watching Penelope’s dogs. Lally and Renny, together as usual, were sitting near her. “They calm her,” Penelope said.

“One of them is her baby, the other isn’t,” I said.

“They both have a good effect on her. The llamas are all so close to each other. Their minds are very linked.”

I thought about my ruminations on the group mind of llamas. Penelope was noticing the same thing.

Penelope turned to Lally. “What an incredible being,” she said. “Now there’s a teacher. She’s very loving and nurturing, and she’s very interested in communicating with people. That’s what she’s here for. She is the one of all of them who really loves people.”

Linda and I grinned at each other. We both knew that Lally was special.

“Would TEAM help her be in her body more?” I asked. TEAM was a method of working with horses, developed by Linda Tellington-Jones, that was just beginning to be applied to llamas.

“Yes, it could give her some softness.”

“Penelope, her external genitalia seem still quite small to me,” I commented. Renny was about nine months old now.

Penelope paused a moment. “Well, she’s quite boyish,” she said.

We turned back to Blossom. Now that she had seen what was going on, she told Penelope, she was willing to talk. She said she was very impatient to get back in with the other ladies; she felt they needed her there to take charge. She couldn’t see how they could do without her!

That sounded like our Blossom all right. “Is her baby okay?” I asked.

She told Penelope that her baby was fine. She was very confident about being a mother.

“She would like to have lots of babies and boss the whole herd,” Penelope said.

She laughed and added, “I get the sense that Blossom has your number. She likes you, but she has you in your place. She didn’t much like it when you had to work on her abscess, but she understood that it was necessary.”

“Actually, her impatience now is detracting from the wound healing,” Penelope went on, encouraging us to put Blossom back in with the others, or at least to have a common fence line with them, as soon as the vet would okay it.

Lil Bit was next. “This llama is very maternal, and there’s a sense of her being old before her time. She’s a very peaceful animal. All the animals tell me they are happy here. Even Posey says now that she is likely to come around and accept being in her body more.”

We walked down to Thundercloud’s field, adjoining the ladies. “He’s a very complete being who likes being a llama. He’s rather solitary. He likes to meditate. He likes being with you, but there is a certain aloofness from you and from the other animals.”

“We’ve had trouble breeding him. He hasn’t gotten anyone pregnant yet. Is there anything the matter with him?” I asked.

“No, there’s nothing the matter with him. It’s just that nobody ever taught him, and he’s having to experiment and figure it all out for himself. He’s a little embarrassed and doesn’t like you watching.”

Penelope said a few words about our other males. Everyone was content. Whiskers was smart, she commented–correctly–but not as focused as his daughter Renaissance.

We had two cats who lived in the barn, Julio and Who. Julio was friendly and Who wasn’t. In the year we’d had her, I’d scarcely ever been able to touch her. She didn’t appear when we were in the barn, but Penelope was able to communicate with her. I asked if I should try harder to make friends with her. Penelope said, “Who says ‘No, don’t try to relate to me. I have very little use for people and just want to be a wild barn cat. I do my job. I’m a good barn cat.’ ”

Then she turned her attention to Teddy Bear, our Australian Shepherd. As she did, he suddenly started trembling. His eyes glazed over and the trembling became stronger. He tried to walk but his legs wouldn’t move. Penelope immediately stopped telepathic contact, and told Kelly to hold him.

“It’s okay, little guy, you’ll be fine,” Kelly reassured him. Penelope and I left Kelly and dog, while we went into another room and met our house cat. When we came back, Teddy had returned to normal consciousness.

“Now he’s telling me something,” Penelope said. “He’s saying, ‘I just want to be a dog. I got scared by what you said about Cider travelling to other realms. I want to stay right here, to love and be loved.’ ”

Teddy had never had a seizure before. In the years since, he has had a few more, often seeming to be triggered by fear. It was striking that he had one at that very moment.

After Penelope and Michel left, we talked about what had happened. Kelly, Linda, and I were all impressed with Penelope’s perceptions. I felt as though a door were opening into realms I had yearned to see. There had been enough specific, accurate comments to make all of us feel that Penelope was really communicating telepathically with the animals.

About a week later, Blossom’s baby was stillborn, probably as a reaction to Rompun, the general anesthetic the vet had used when operating on her. I wondered if the baby had been all right when Penelope had been there, or if she had missed something. In any case, I decided, I was glad I hadn’t known of the problem, as there would have been nothing I could do but worry. And I was all too good at that.

A few months later, Kelly and I began working with Penelope on a videotape called Telepathic Communication with Animals. As Kelly interviewed people Penelope had worked with and as he edited the video footage, he became increasingly open to the realities Penelope described. Often he would comment that one of our animals wanted something or was thinking of something.

I too was opening up, though less than Kelly. I was often frustrated that my skeptical mind still seemed to get in the way of the process. But then, my mind was working overtime. We were looking at some big changes.

“I get something in the small intestine or first part of the large intestine,” she said. “Actually her whole digestive tract is upset. And there’s a constriction, something to do with her brain. There’s a pressure in her head, a firing in her brain. And right along with that, I get the same attitude that her daughter had. Posey would like to leave. The short-circuit in the brain is how she’s been trying to take herself out.

“She is happy for the attention you are giving her, and she wants me to tell you that she likes you both very much, but she is not of this world.

“So Posey is in a debate. She wants to go, but she also is still considering staying. She says she doesn’t really see a purpose to staying, now that you are moving.”

I asked Penelope to ask Posey if she would stay to raise Perry.

“She says this baby is not one of hers. She’ll be fine. She’s a regular llama.”

“The vets are talking about taking her to Davis,” I said.

“That’s a hard one,” Penelope replied. “But you can ask Posey to decide by tomorrow. Explain how hard it is for you to just wait and watch. She has the ability to go if she wants to or to heal herself. She might want some veterinary help too. Just wait and see.”

“Penelope, how are the other ladies feeling? Do they understand what’s going on with the moving and all?”

“Let me check,” said Penelope. After a moment, she commented, “There is a sadness in Lally. She’s not ill, but she’s a little depressed. There’s a disbelief that it will really happen. She will adjust because there is also understanding there. She is accepting the change. As for Lil Bit, she doesn’t want to talk about it.”

I said that we were trying to get her pregnant.

“She doesn’t want to get pregnant now. Maybe she will later. She’ll go where she’s meant to go, but she has that same quietness as Lally. And Blossom is simply incredulous. She just doesn’t believe it’s going to happen.”

Our conversation returned to Posey. “Tell her, ‘It’s your life, to stay or go. We’d like you to stay.’ And see how she’s doing by tomorrow. Tell her to decide, not drag the indecision on.”

“It’s really been hard,” I sighed.

“You’ve attracted some very unusual beings to yourselves and to Juniper Ridge,” Penelope said. “Now that you’re leaving, they have to make their own decisions too.”

“Is that what happened with Renaissance?”

“I don’t think she ever meant to stay very long. She’s like Posey, not a regular llama.”

After we hung up, I sat for a while, thinking. It was a great relief to have talked with Penelope. Gradually I realized that I had already known much of what she said, that the same themes had come up in that meeting with the Great Llama. Between my prophetic dream and the Great Llama reverie, it seemed that I was finally opening up to telepathic connections. If there was still extraneous or even erroneous material as part of the new awareness, well, maybe that would sort itself out over time.

These days had been very stressful, but now–like when Shadow and Lally didn’t nurse–I could see in retrospect the gifts of learning. As before, I felt a deep gratitude to the llamas and to life itself. I wondered what kinds of thoughts other llama owners had at times like this. Then I pulled myself back to what needed doing.

On the floor are bags of more wool. Whiskers’ wool is a rich, deep black, but useless for spinning. His guard hairs are almost as soft as his undercoat and consequently his wool contains more bits of hay and dirt than I have the patience to clean out.

I pick up a small handful of Renny’s wool, pull it apart with my fingers, and let tiny bits of dirt fall down onto the table. It is the first time I’ve touched her wool since we sheared her, and suddenly I can’t see it clearly. My eyes fill with tears as I think of how sweetly she would put her delicate face next to mine for a greeting.

Lil Bit’s wool is easier to clean. It’s thick and long, and the very thickness seems to keep out some debris. I set to work cleaning a pile of it, thinking that of all the llamas, Lil was the one I could most easily connect with telepathically. Or was it just my imagination?
Lil suddenly appears in my mind. “And they call the animals dumb!” she sniffs.

“Well, look, Lil, this is a big stretch for me.”

“And about time, too. Rosana, you need to understand that we are all connected. Every llama knows this, from the womb on. We connect with each other, but also with people. We knew before you did, that you would be leaving Juniper Ridge. We felt a change in the energy, building up for a long time.”

“What do you think of what happened with Posey?” I ask.

“Ah, Posey.” Lil ruminates. “She and I have shared our lives, and yet there is much that I don’t understand. We go to different places. When I feel the earth beneath me, immense peace enters my body.

“Posey goes up into the sky and far beyond. I have tried to follow her, but I can’t get very far before the earth pulls me back. She goes way, way out. When we sit and chew our cuds, I can feel her drifting away, and then for a long time I don’t feel any connection. When she was pregnant with Renaissance, they both would go out there. I haven’t noticed that with her other babies. When you decided to leave the mountains, Posey was afraid that at the lower elevations of earth, it would be even harder for her to stomach this life.”

“Was it?”

“Yes, at first. But she has changed. She has become more accepting of the rest of us. I think she will stay on earth for a normal lifespan.