Sun, 12 Aug 2007

Rasta's Final Resting

One thing most non-farm people don't think about is the disposal of dead animals - I even had one friend ask if we were going to butcher and eat Rasta! Uh, no.

There are several reasons for this: one, we're not always sure why the critter died, and if it was an infectious disease or a poison it would beas distinctly bad idea to chow down. Also, although we were acutely aware of exactly when when Rasta died, this is not usually the case, and humans have always generally avoided carrion. Besides, I don't have an good llama recipes! So carcasses must be disposed of, and it must be done legally and (at least on farms like mine) in some reasonably eco-friendly way.

I know I'll never call the dead wagon again: once is enough for that experience. But how do two people load a 500 pound rotting carcass in the back of a truck, and where do you take it when you do get it loaded?

The short answer to the first question is that two people don't get a 500 lb. carcass in the back of a truck - not without a winch or a front loader, neither of which I own. It takes at least three people to accomplish this. Along with much grunting, sweating (winter or summer) and swearing. If you've not experienced it firsthand, you have no idea how a llama that's been lying about in 100° plus heat for two days smells. And trust me on this one, you really don't want to know, either.

If I had managed to get him loaded with enough time to get to Lafayette by 5pm on Friday, I could've taken him to the Purdue University School of Veterinary Medicine, which would have done a rudimentary necropsy and disposed of the carcass for a mere $50. I came home early, but after much struggling Friday afternoon, it proved impossible for two to load the dead llama, so we had to find another option. Karl (a neighbor) has a "back 40", with a tumbledown rock pile and a composting area. He already had a couple of recently dead hogs back there, and said it would be no trouble at all to let us drop Rasta off - but we'd have to get him there ourselves.

A neighbor, Tim, came over Friday evening to help us. Tim's a big strong guy, but it still took us nearly two hours, a fence come-along, an old ramp I used for loading equipment, a wheelbarrow and several fence posts for levers, before we finally got the carcass into the truck. At 10pm. If ancient Egyptians had loaded llamas into pickup trucks, this is more or less how they would've done it. He was delivered to his final resting place on Saturday morning. And Tim will get a new website and free hosting for a year, plus whatever help he'll need if one of his critters kicks the bucket. You can't thank somebody enough for offering to help in a situation like this.

Whew! and phew! I suspect that despite showering and changing clothes we smelt of dead llama. Or perhaps the odor was just fixed in our olfactory nerves, and no one else could smell it. It's been 24 hours, and I can still get a noxious whiff every once in a while, so I certainly have reason to hope it's just our noses. But we'll never know for sure.

/Home | 2 writebacks | permanent link

On 8/13/2007 06:05:54
Analemma wrote

On 8/18/2007 20:40:04
Walter Jeffries wrote

Compost

comment...

 
Notes: If you put a <mailto:> link in the URL field your address will not be mangled: this could be a bad idea as your email address could be easily harvested by bots designed for SPAM. The comments field should now format correctly for line feeds and carriage returns: when you hit the 'Enter' or 'Return' keys in your comment it should break to a new line. The text should wrap cleanly. Please let me know if it doesn't. No HTML tags will pass through - entering links seems to be the main cause of comment SPAM. Also, please be sure that Javascript is enabled in your browser before attempting to post a writeback. Sorry for any inconvenience, but this really helps cut down on the amount of comment SPAM I have to deal with.
 
 Name:
 URL:(optional)
 Title: (optional)
 Comments:  
Save my Name and URL/Email for next time