Introducing Ferdinand

Ferdinand is a very sweet alpaca...well, usually sweet, until he identifies you as being the one who feeds him and then the trouble starts. He lives at The Putney School where my son Avi had the (not always) pleasure of helping to take care of him during his senior year of high school.

Avi's senior year, not Ferdinand's.

The sparks started to fly in the spring when the alpacas were moved from the barn out to the field. At that time, Ferdinand had a big personality shift around Avi. He was still lovely around other humans, but for Avi, he just turned mean. The working theory is that because he associated Avi with food, any other interaction with him was just wrong. But really, who knows. Because it is impossible to know what an alpaca is actually feeling.

I asked Avi to write something about Ferdinand.

“I never knew a teddy bear could be so vengeful until I met Ferdinand. He has a ceaseless hunger that he'll go to any means to satisfy. Yet his fur is somehow thicker than his appetite.”

And still we are both grateful to have had the chance to get just a little closer to him.