The day started out like any other normal day. We had our morning feeding and were grazing our pasture. We did notice it was a lot windier than normal and we were having some rain. Alpacas can tell inside when it is going to rain, but today felt different. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I felt weird. We continued to graze as alpacas do, but the wind was getting stronger.
It was long until our human came out and put halters on all of us, including Louie. None of us were fans of halters, but we figured something was happening. He did the same with mom’s herd. Yesterday he did the same thing and brought us up to room inside the main house. Once we got inside, he gave us some feed. We ate, sniffed around and went back to our pasture after a short visit. He did the same with Louie and my mom’s herd. I guess we were going to do this again today?At the time, we didn't know why we had been brought in there, but it wasn't long until we figured it out.
It was really getting windy, when we saw him leading my mom’s herd into the room inside the main house. We noticed they went in, but did not come out. Next, he grabbed Nico, Monty and I and brought us up to the house as well. When I got inside, I was very happy to see my mom. She and her herd were in a stall, but I was able to stick my head between the bars and gave her a big kiss. She could tell I was scared, so she told me not to worry. She said a bad storm was coming and we were being brought inside for our safety. Mom always knew how to calm me down. She was so wise and caring. I smiled and was just very happy to be so close to her after such a long time away.
As we were talking, the door opened again and there was Louie. He seemed upset. He was put in our pen and I could tell he was worried. He started looking around, doing a headcount. Monty let him know we were all here. Once he saw everyone was safe, he calmed down too. As a guard, he was responsible for our safety. When we were taken away from him, he got very upset. Thankfully everyone was together and Louie was happy.
Inside the room we had plenty of hay and water. Once things settled down and everyone found a spot, we all felt better. We ate some hay, cushed and relaxed. I guess this was the calm before the storm?
We felt pretty cozy inside the room. I was very happy to be with my mom and our herds. We could hear the wind blowing hard outside, but we couldn’t feel anything. Mom told us to try to relax, because it would probably be a long night. As usual, mom was right again!
None of us slept much that night. We could hear things bouncing off the roof, rain pounding, but thankfully we were dry. Mom and her herd started humming. It was soothing to listen to and I know we all appreciated it to help us stay calm. Our human came in through the night to make sure everyone was doing good. We were all tired and I think I dozed off a few times, but we didn’t sleep much. It was a long night of scary noises, but eventually things quieted down. We couldn’t tell because we couldn’t see outside, but we think it was morning. We were all a little anxious to get back to our barn and pasture. The "sleepover" was fun, but we all wanted to go home!
Soon the door opened, and we were herded back into our pasture. We could see a lot of branches on the ground, but our barns and fences were fine. Once Louie and my herd were back in our pasture, they went back in to get mom’s herd. Soon we were back in our surroundings, we were able to graze around the branches on the fresh, very wet grass. It was a long night and we were very tired, but we also appreciated that no one got hurt and our barns were not damaged. We were also thankful our humans took such care of us.
We had survived a hurricane and thankfully things got back to normal pretty quickly. As usual just as things started to settle down, we had more change coming - B