WATCH: After two days lost in the hills of Highlands, Sparkle the llama was finally reunited with her owner. But as Luisa Alvarez tells us, finding and catching Sparkle wasn’t exactly a walk in the park.
Sparkle the llama had her owner worried sick. She was missing since Sunday and while there had been several sightings of her, nobody had been able to catch her.
“She’s been gone for two days and has been properly spooked and properly starving,” said Sparkles owner Livinia Stevens.
Sparkle was lent out as a companion for another llama who had recently lost his friend.
They’re really not animals that are meant to be alone so Livinia kindly let a couple of her girls come stay with me, and mine and the other girl were happy, but Sparkle was not,” said Jen Kyle.
Its rare for llamas to leave the group so whatever it was it spooked Sparkle enough for her to run through a fence and end up loose in Highlands.
Just after 2 p.m, Monday Sparkle was spotted at Goodwin Farms but the problem was the farm stretches over 200 acres.
“My fear always is in an area like this how do we catch her?” said Stevens.
Under normal circumstances, llamas aren’t usually hard to catch and tend to listen when they’re called, said Stevens.
But tired, hungry and afrai,d Sparkle was certainly not going to make it easy.
Find Lost and Escaped Dogs Vancouver Island, an organization that aims to reunite lost animals with their owners, got involved in the search for Sparkle but volunteer Gary Shade says the search wasn’t easy.
“We got the call yesterday but we couldn’t catch her and it got dark so we came back this morning and we’ve been driving from the other end of the property on the road just kind of corralling her with our vehicles,” said Shade.
And finally after hours of slow coaxing, Sparkle made her way into a smaller fenced area and it was all hands on deck to catch her.
“Such a relief to get her and that she is ok,” said Kyle.
Thanks to a valiant team effort Sparkles was captured safe and sound, finally ending her two-day furlough.
Luisa Alvarez
