The killing fields

When we arrived at the shephards shed to meet Don Jose and Raul above camp this morning we learned there had been a massacre the night before. In the night a puma killed ten alpacas in the high pasture. It was a slaughter of not one or two, but ten alpacas killed. The guys, Rual, Ramon, Liberato, and Wilfredo are still looking for the carcasses of some drug away missing in the nearby forests.

Today was supposed to be a surprise day of horseback riding for us and the students through the paramo. The previous week Seth and I arranged horses to be brought up and loaned from different people in Colepato, the local community below. It was no easy feet to negotiate, and in the end we didn´t have quite enough for the two of us but managed eight horses for all the students. We sent them off in good hands with Don Jose and his nephew and then joined the guys to look for the missing alpacas.

I´ve never witnessed a crime scene before, though that was what it felt like as we searched for the bodies of the dead animals. It was a big cat kill like something straight out of a National Geographic! As we followed the guys tracking down steep hillsides into dense bamboo thickets and mossy Weimania forests we found one body after another of the four that were still missing. The body of one found yesterday in the pasture was missing today, meaning he came back for it in the night. All that remained were clumps of fur and a bloody heart laying like a macabre memento in the grass. It was all rather violent, spooky, and also thrilling to be on the trail of a big predator´s carnage. Nearly every body we found in the thickets had been dragged there and half eaten with the stomach torn out. Puma´s often kill by breaking the neck and devour the organs first, often caching their food away in thickets to return to at their leisure just as we were finding.

The guys were none too pleased and it was a major loss, both emotionally and economically. We found the rest of the herd nearby still visibly spooked, bunched up, and emotionally unraveled. I don´t blame them. Economically the loss of ten alpacas represents a loss of more than four grand for Stu as well. As the guys buried the dead Seth and I returned to meet the students back from riding.

Like a fox in a henhouse, a puma in an alpaca pasture. I wonder if he is our puma, the same who´s eyeshine we saw late that night by the glow of the fire...Now that he´s discovered such easy pickings I expect he´ll be back for more and so now the guys will have to stand guard and keep the herds close. Sometimes I forget just how untamed this place is perched here on the edge of this mountain hinterland. A vast wilderness stretching through the raw heart of the Andes....