Birthday Celebration With Some Very Fluffy Alpacas
For the birthday this year: alpacas. A ranch up in Pala, most of the herd freshly shorn for summer, which leaves them with skinny bare necks and full curly hairdos on top — the effect is somewhere between poodle and camel and it never stopped being funny. They crowd the fence the second they figure out you might have food. One tan one with dark eyes kept pushing its whole face at us, muzzle covered in bits of hay, and two of the white ones spent a while nibbling at each other's mouths over whatever one of them was still chewing.
The party spread was fully committed to the theme: llama plates, llamas in sunglasses, cupcakes piped with pink fur and marshmallow faces, and a cake topped with two alpaca cookies in little fondant blankets standing among fondant cacti and succulents. Somebody put real work into that cake. We ate it at a table right beside the pen, so the actual alpacas were milling around behind their dessert doubles the whole time.
Drove home to a sky going orange behind the hill, clouds lit up over the rooftops.
