I HAVE THE STRANGEST CONVERSATIONS SOMETIMES, where I start out talking to someone about work and end up talking about spitting llamas.

Did you know llamas spit? I don’t just mean drool like a rouge calf. I mean S-P-I-T. Hocking a loogie. Hiss, spatter, spew, and spritz. And even worse, they can aim.

It all started with the Festival of Colors, a local tradition at the Sri Sri Radha Krishna Temple of throwing colored flower everywhere to celebrate the arrival of spring. We weren’t aware that the Festival had started, but Machelle, Mom and I realized there were cars everywhere. We pulled over, found a place to park and wound our way up the hill to the Temple. The real question was, how do we get in? We thought we were going the right way, that was, until Machelle turned around and was face to face with the sweetest, biggest brown eyes you ever did see. They were rimmed with long lashes, a sweet face and a bright pink tongue, giving her the once over that is common in young creatures.

A llama, in this case, is no exception when it comes to being smarter than it appears. They are very bright animals, and are used to guard flocks of sheep against coyotes and other predators. Don’t mess with Tina. (Please someone tell me you know who Tina the llama is).

But this was no Tina, this was too sweet, too young to be able to do anything. “Awwuh, look at the little guy,” we all gushed. Our moment of maternal appreciation was cut short when we heard the stomping of hooves and a very loud snort. Mama Tina had just come roaring on up, and was demanding to know why we had kidnapped her baby. And this bugger was persistent. There was no Shoo Shooing him away. We turned to politely take our leave, and were faced with a brick wall of llamas.

HUNDREDS OF THEM.

I understand that’s an overstatement, but let me tell you, when you have a pack of thirty llamas all giving you the stink eye and making hacking noises to gather some spit . . .it sure feels like hundreds. There was simply no way past, and the then-cute baby was now the annoying little brat that wouldn’t take a hint. Anyone ever seen The Emperor’s New Groove? It was about like that. We were horrified. Frozen.

But we had to live through this. This could not be how I would die. I would not, could not allow myself to be stomped to death by some deranged, long neck goat. No. So together, we joined forces, and forced our way through the wall of fur to the other side.

The trick it seems, is to be tougher than the llama.

So next time, we were prepared. We were visiting some oddity of a farm a few towns over. They had everything from emus, to ostridges, antelope to wallabies. They also had two llamas that were standing just on the other side of a chain link fence. One llama was friendly and allowed us to feed it some grass. The other llama started that familiar stink eye look, chewed it’s cheeks for saliva production, and began to grumble.

Machelle took the assertive this time, and right as the offended llama went to aim – right when he threw his head forward, tightened his neck muscles and started to open it’s mouth to spit – Machelle did something amazing, and spit on the llama first. The llama was so offended that it huffed and walked away.

I’m telling you man, those llamas are vicious.