A Life Well Spent: The Life of Chocolat

This is Chocolat. His sister lives to our right, and his friend Walter to our left in the picture.

                        
                          Although we'd had alpacas from 1999 on, the first baby alpaca or cria wasn't born to our farm until July 12, 2002, when a ten pound chocolate colored male was born, whom we quite naturally called Chocolat.  Chocolate was born to our herd sire Mr Ditto Two and to Queen Isabelle. Alpacas are interesting animals for many reasons one of them being that they are able to throw crias of different colors than themselves, often throwing a color of one of their ancestors. Mr. Ditto Two was jet black, and Queen Isabelle was a brownish rose color with some white markings. The entire herd rejoiced when Chocolat was born.
                           The following year, Shakria, a sister to Chocolat was born, and she did not establish nursing as well as she should have, and although we were in the process of correcting this, she died suddenly one morning, while we checked upon her. This was the first time that our alpacas thought that we might not always have all the answers. If we couldn't help them keep this young cria alive, then perhaps we weren't really trustworthy.  This time, the herd grieved, and there was nothing we could do, other than be attentive to their needs and sympathetic to their issues.  We did bring soccer balls to them and for a time, they enjoyed playing was truly resembled a soccer game. This ended when the vet said that one of them would eventually fracture a leg and need to be euthanized. I still remember the day I replaced soccer balls with tether balls.
                           The year which followed that one brought one more sister for Chocolat. Warrior Princess Camellia was born the following summer.  This time we identified her feeding difficulties immediately, and a veterinarian came, taught us to tube feed her until she grew a little larger, and gave her a blood transfusion in the hope of conveying the antibodies she needed.  As time passed, Camellia and Chocolat grew.  They lived in different pastures, but I think they knew that they were of the same parents.
                         The year that we sold and built a second farm, their mother, Queen Isabelle was diagnosed with astrocytoma. This may have been the root cause of her having difficulty producing adequate milk for her crias. Queen Isabelle died fairly quickly after her diagnosis, leaving the herd grieving once again.
                         By 2018, many of the alpacas that were part of the original herd have passed. Alpacas generally are felt to have a fifteen year life span, but at times, we have had individuals live as long as about twenty-three. Since alpacas are herd animals and cannot live as singles, we are faced with difficult decisions as we must keep adding one to keep the basic required number of three.  On May the 13th, we face this decision once again.  Chocolat, who was fine that morning, was found in the early afternoon, on his side, with labored irregular breathing. He passed shortly after.  He leaves a small herd consisting of his sister Camellia in he neighboring paddock, and his friend Walter, a white alpaca in the opposite neighboring paddock. These animals are the last of an era. We are at a loss as to whether to keep adding one more, one more, or not. I hope we do because we made a lifetime commitment to care for this family of animals, a long time ago.  Goodbye Chocolat. Thank you for coming.