Llamageddon: Why Toddler Bonding Trips Always Go Wrong

My son and I whipped down the Utah freeway at exactly five over the limit, and I knew that I was about to take the crown as the favorite parent.  Since birth, he has made it clear he prefers his mom—first through crying, later through actual words. 

He wails and gnashes his teeth like a professional mourner every time I put him down for bed.  Anytime I ask if he wants to play outside, he immediately looks for his mom to take him.  Today, after I told him I loved him, he replied that he loved the crackers on the counter next to me.  That one doesn’t specifically relate to his mother, but it hurt all the same.

But here—now—was my moment to become the favorite.  I had strategically left his mom with her mom for some much-needed girl time, and my ace in the hole waited a few miles up the road: a llama farm.

While my son goes through book phases like a prepubescent boy goes through favorite construction vehicles, Llama Llama Red Pajama has always been a hit.  He loves the voices I use, the catchy rhymes, the chaos a small child can bring to a parent’s night, all of it.  So logically, seeing real llamas was a guaranteed hit.  This was my bonding moment, and I planned on making the most of it.

My wife, sensing an opportunity to have a toddler-free afternoon, happily agreed to the outing.  My son, however, had other ideas.

The Perfect Plan

“I have a surprise for you,” I said, kneeling down so I could look my firstborn in the eye.  “Do you want to go see some llamas with me?”

He looked back at me with narrowed eyes as his toddler brain went to war over the competing desires of furry mammals and doting mothers.  “I want mommy to take me,” he said, neatly splitting the Gordian knot.

After some placating actions made to a thoroughly unconvinced toddler, we loaded up and took off.  My plan was in action and nothing would stop me from finally having a bonding moment with my son.  I could already picture his face lighting up when he saw the llamas, hear him telling his mom about how amazing his day was with that enthusiasim reserved for truly special experiences.  This was it—my time to shine as Dad of the Year and secure a beachhead in the Normandy of his heart.

As we drove, a gleaming white building caught my eye.  At first, I thought it was a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint’s temple.  We were in Utah, after all.  Further inspection showed its architecture to be all wrong, though.  I thought little of it until Google Maps helpfully told me to take the exit closest to the odd building.  Maybe we’ll see what it is as we drive by, I thought to myself. 

A few minutes later, I rolled to a stop looking directly at the white building as Google Maps happily pinged that we had arrived at our destination.  This confused me, because instead of a field of frolicking llamas, I was instead staring at Buddhist temple.  As for animal life, the selection appeared to be a plethora of peacocks.  Not a llama in sight.

Temple Trouble

A quick address check off the website showed that we were at the right location, with the text “open to the public” clearly displayed both online and in-person.  I looked through the windshield and saw a definite lack of public.  Or workers.  Or any living being apart from the peacocks.

“Daddy,” my son said from the backseat.  “Are we going to see the llamas?”

We had come for llamas, and I was going to deliver llamas.  Nothing—not peacocks, not abandoned temples, not my growing suspicions that we were trespassing—would stop me from giving my son this moment.

I turned the car off, collected the toddler, and strode through the temple grounds like a member of the public it was theoretically open to.  In the distance, a peacock shrieked.

Our effort was soon rewarded, as coming over a small rise revealed the promised pasture with its llama inhabitants.  Two dozen of the long-necked camelids grazed in the field below, a particularly majestic specimen with black and white markings standing at the peak of a small hill like a sentinel.  We had found our promised land, and beheld that it was good.  This was premium dad territory, and I could taste my victory.

As we came closer, however, the oddness of the situation sank in.  While I saw llamas, I still had yet to see another person.  We made it up to the fence without a soul in sight, and only a small sign hanging off the livestock gate gave me any context: “please close gate behind you”.  Next to this gate, however, was a human-sized switchback entrance like the line for the world’s worst amusement park ride.  Nothing blocked this path, so I threw my son on my shoulders, buried my increasingly certain trespassing guilt deep, and walked into the enclosure to the sound of screaming peacocks.

My son’s happy babbling and frantic waving at the llamas rapidly dispelled any concerns.  This is what I had dreamed of, a moment of pure joy radiating from his childlike heart as his father—his dad—brought him the closest he’ll ever get to seeing a unicorn. 

First Contact

As we walked into the field, the llamas turned to face us.  To my extreme pleasure, the black and white llama I had spotted earlier started walking towards us.  Not only did he get to see the llamas, but he’d likely have the opportunity to pet one as well!  I pulled out my phone to document the wonder of the moment so my wife would know what an amazing a husband and father she had found, which is why I now have photographic evidence of my son’s joy turning to terror in mere seconds.

In the first of three pictures, the llama is ten feet away and my son is leaning towards it, entranced.  In the second, the llama is five feet away and my son has visibly leaned back towards me.  In the third, the llama is a foot away and my son is attempting to crawl over my shoulder like a shipwreck victim who can’t swim clawing his way to air over the bodies of his shipmates.

At this moment, I admit, I still thought I could salvage the situation.  A few deep breaths, a demonstration of petting the llama, and we’d be back on track.  Then I saw the second llama approaching.  The third.  All hunting for food we didn’t have.  When I noticed the rest of the herd approaching, I knew the battle was lost. 

This wasn’t the bonding moment I’d envisioned.  No gentle petting, no core memory of delight, no photographic proof of my son’s face lighting up at his literary heroes comes to life.  Just terror, retreat, and the distinct possibility to explaining to my wife how I’d traumatized our child with the very animals meant to enchant him.

Unsatisfied with its victory, the black and white llama—the Sentry, I’d come to call him—chose to hound my steps the entire way out of the pasture.  It paced behind me, its teeth inches away from my now exposed neck.  I knew that science says llamas are herbivores, but can we really know what they do in the high mountain valleys of the Andes?  The thoughts of triumphantly returning to my wife fell apart, replaced with a new vision of her confused expression as two somber police officers tried explaining that her husband was the first documented victim of a fatal llama attack in the state of Utah.  Yet through her confused expression I saw a glimmer of acceptance, as though she thought, “Of course it would be him.”

More pressing than death: the image of returning to my wife a failure, her unsurprised expression when our son inevitably chose her for the next adventure. Thankfully, we made it back through the switchback entrance without incident.  The Sentry paced along the fence line, stymied but not yet defeated. 

No Prob-llama

Distracted by the relief of avoiding certain death, it took me a moment to realize that where fate had snatched away one victory, she had offered another.  Behind the gate, past some large bushes, sat a small playground complete with salvation in two forms: a swing set and a slide.

This was it—my pivot.  I’d survived llamageddon, now came redemption.  A playground with a llama view?  That’s the kind of creative problem-solving that wins favorite parent campaigns.  I hadn’t lost yet.

My son pulled another one-eighty, going from terror back to joy when I asked if he wanted to slide.  I convinced myself I had pulled victory from the jaws of defeat.  There are few feelings as pure as catching your smiling child at the bottom of a slide, and when they run up to do it again and again, you touch a dash of the joy you felt at that age through their smile. 

This was what he’d tell his mom about.  Not the terrifying llamas, but the slide.  The playground dad found.  The laughs we shared.  For five glorious minutes, I felt the crown settling onto my head.  I’d done it.

Then, as I stood at the bottom of the slide waiting to catch my son again, I happened to glance over my shoulder.  The Sentry had decided it wasn’t done with me.  Weaving through the switchback gate like a shaggy snake, it stood on the human side of the fence and stared at me.  Like high noon in a John Wayne movie, the two of us locked eyes.  I wasn’t sure how effective my decade-old boxing skills would be on a llama, but I was prepared to find out.

Before I could start any llama drama, however, the Sentry turned its nose up and ambled towards the temple, dismissing me entirely.  Beneath consideration.  I was already beaten. 

Fate, having given me enough of her charity, chose at that moment to withdraw her favor.  A peacock hiding in the bushes a few feet away let loose the most tremendous screech we had heard up to that point.  My son’s eyes went huge and he sprinted into my arms.  I gathered him up and comforted him as best I could, but the damage was done.

“I wanna go home,” he said.

And just like that, my salvage operation collapsed.  The llamas had broken him first, and now the peacocks finished the job.  I’d brought my son to a Buddhist temple to be terrorized by livestock.  Father of the year, indeed.

What was I to do?  Bowing my head in defeat, I hugged my son tight and carried him back towards our car.

As I carried him to the parking lot, I spotted the Sentry once again.  It stood casually chewing on a tree outside the temple entrance, exactly where any visitor would walk through.  No longer pursuing, no longer threatening.  Just…occupying the space.  Claiming it.  The creature had won its war and driven us from the field.  Now it stood sentry over territory I was actively fleeing.

In the distance, another peacock shrieked.  I picked up the pace.

From the Ashes, Victory

As we drove away from the temple, I glanced in the rearview mirror to check on my son.  I saw the Sentry still standing guard, surveying its domain.  I fought the llama, and the llama won.

Then my son’s voice cut through my defeat.  “Daddy, horse!” he pointed excitedly at a field we passed.  Then another.  “More horsies!  Two horsies!  Daddy, do you see it?”

I smiled and caught his eye in the rearview mirror.  “I see it, little hawk.”

“And we went on the slide!” he continued, his enthusiasm building.  “The big slide!  And the peacocks were SO LOUD!”  He made an exaggerated screech that bore zero resemblance to an actual peacock but conveyed the essence of it perfectly.  Then he laughed.

I watched him in that mirror, this tiny person who had moved from terror to joy to terror to joy again in the span of an hour, and was now excitedly cataloging every moment—except the llamas.

We made it back to my in-law’s house, and my wife asked us how it went.  Before I could get a word in, my son launched into a detailed account of how much fun he had on the slide, interspersed with dramatic recounting of how loud the peacocks were.  When she asked if he saw the llamas, he briefly acknowledged their existence before jumping right back to the slide and peacocks.

I smiled as I watched him, realizing the black and white llama might have won its war, but I’d somehow won mine.  Not through a meticulously planned llama encounter, but through catching him at the bottom of a slide.  Through spotting horses with him on the drive home.  Through being there when peacocks terrified him and slides delighted him in equal measure.

My wife looked at me, reading something in my expression.  “Sounds like an adventure,” she said.

“It was,” I replied. And meant it.

Turns out favorite parent isn’t a crown you win.  It’s being there when peacocks shriek, when slides save you, when terror turns to laughter in the space of a breath.  You can’t manufacture the perfect moment.  You can only be present for the real one.

So even though I know it will sting tomorrow when he makes his preference for his mom blatantly clear, I’ll know that he and I still have our moments—those in the past, and those still to come.

But I’m absolutely not mentioning my recurring llama-themed nightmares.  Some defeats are better left unshared.