Llama abandoned in west county; owner sought

<p>It wasn't your usual deer sighting last week near Savio Lane and Grape Road in Forestville -- the long neck gave it away.</p><p>This was a starving llama, missing half its hair, its backbone thinly veiled, its rump emaciated and sunken like that of a dairy cow.</p><p>"It's supposed to look like a big plump basketball," said local horse rescuer Betsy Bueno. "It had zero fat."</p><p>A week ago, Bueno got a call from Sonoma County Animal Care and Control officials, asking her to come pick up the animal and to care for it while officials searched for the llama's owner.</p><p>Bueno said the llama wouldn't eat for 48 hours. She said she tried everything: grain, alfalfa, grass hay, regular green grass, llama pellets, fruit and vegetables. But nothing worked.</p><p>On the recommendation of a local veterinarian, she gave the llama a shot of vitamin B12 and a steroid shot. The llama soon began to eat and has been doing so since last Friday.</p><p>The female llama appears to have been neglected, but Bueno thinks she was also abandoned. She has set up a reward fund at a local bank in the hope that someone will come forward with information about the llama's owner.</p><p>Bob Garcia, the county's supervising animal control officer, said calls about llamas are unusual.</p><p>"It's very rare, extremely rare," Garcia said. "Apparently the animal was out for a longer period of time."</p><p>Garcia said animal control officers captured the llama on Trenton Road near Speers Market. When they failed to locate where it came from, they impounded it.</p><p>That's when Bueno, who runs Lost Hearts and Souls Horse Rescue in Santa Rosa, was called.</p><p>"They jokingly told me it was a long-haired horse," she said.</p><p>Bueno said her rescued horses are "freaked out" by the llama and run away from it in a pack whenever they see the llama move. On the other hand, she said her golden retriever is obsessed with the beast of burden, which appears to like the dog as well.</p><p>With each passing day, it appears more likely the animal was abandoned.</p><p>"It is becoming more possible since we have not heard from anyone," Garcia said. "Generally, if someone was missing their pet llama, they're going to go looking for it."</p><p>Llamas, he said, appear to be falling out of fashion among local large-animal pet enthusiasts, the same way interest in emus in the 1990s and pot-bellied pigs in the 1980s eventually waned.</p><p>"The interest in llamas has gone down," he said. "You don't see as many."</p><p>For more information about the reward fund, call Bob Garcia at Sonoma County Animal Care and Control at 565-7100.</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com.</p>