#there also might be something hidden behind oreo

[hedgehog-moss]

Look at the delicious sushi for llamas I made today:

It's courgette stuffed with deworming paste and thanks to Poldine my plan went swimmingly. Pampelune is sometimes distrustful on deworming day, but when they saw Poldine get a treat then try to steal the other treats which were obviously meant for them, the other animals hurried to claim their own medicinal courgette as well.

Except Pampe. (How many times have I written these words.) She looked at her sushi, looked at me, sniffed every side of the courgette, decided it smelled like deceit, and walked away.

I felt daft for not going the muesli route straight away. Like all great tricksters Pampérigouste is suspicious by nature but she can't resist muesli. So I un-stuffed the courgette and used the sticky deworming paste to fashion a little muesli ball.

It was gooey and not very appetising but it's muesli, right? I camouflaged the muesli ball in a dish of innocent muesli and offered it to Pampe, but unfortunately she was now very aware that I was up to something. Instead of mindlessly vacuuming the contents of the muesli dish as she usually does, she examined the strange slimy little ball, pushed it away with her nose with obvious contempt, then ate the normal muesli. I tried (with increasing insistence and frustration) to convince her to eat the damn muesli ball, but no.

New idea: I went to the kitchen to get some pumpkin rinds, and squished the muesli ball between two small pieces of pumpkin skin like a Choco BN (if you're from the US, picture an orange worm-killing Oreo). Pampe likes pumpkin skin! I tried to explain to her that she would be punishing only herself if she refused the (admittedly deceitful) offering out of principle.

Somehow she managed to eat the outside 'biscuits' and spit out the stuffing.

At this point I had to shame her. (I told her to look ashamed for this photo; not sure she understood the assignment)

I had exhausted my creativity and had nothing left but the mean method. I got Pampe in llama jail, aka the school room where I spent many hours trying to teach her to wear a halter and be a good docile llama when she was little, while she spent many hours trying to escape by any conceivable means—high jumps, bribery, tunnels, you name it.

(In the background behind Poldine you can see the bag of hay that I used to get the llamas to follow me into the corral. Pampe naively thought I had given up on trying to make her eat gross slimy things and was about to give her a normal meal)

She tried a strange kind of escape this time around, which honestly might have worked if she were a swift salmon returning to her natal river to spawn, slicing against the current in a series of graceful, forward-arching curves. But she's a llama. It's like she forgot she wasn't all neck and also had a body that needed to clear this obstacle.

I sang her a little song to soothe her, and scritched her face, and managed to get a llama kiss which is more affection than I've ever received from a currently-jailed Pampe—her daughter really is a good influence on her!

So of course I took advantage of this moment of calm and trust to stick my hidden secret syringe in the corner of her mouth and push 2cm of deworming paste onto her tongue.

She was VEXED and WROTH.

We were talking about learning poetry by heart the other day; well, if Pampérigouste did that, "I am rowing (a hex poem)" is the poem she would have invoked in that moment.

After I left, all the other animals hurried into the corral to eat the hay I had used to get Pampe in, while Pampe turned her back on the meal and walked away a strategic distance, far enough to show me that she felt betrayed and would never eat any food I bring her ever again, not so far that she couldn't go back in and fight the donkey for what was left of the hay as soon as I stopped looking.