Marblehead Fire Department answers an unusual call

MARBLEHEAD – A child in a burning building, a cat in a tree … firefighters are trained and ready for all kinds of rescues. Saturday’s was a little different.”I’m going to say that we’ve never trained for rescuing alpacas,” Marblehead Fire Department Capt. Daniel Rice said Monday. “But that’s what being a firefighter is; you never know what you’re going to do every day and that’s what makes it fun.”Members of the Marblehead Fire Department, Marblehead Police and the animal control officer responded to the Marblehead Neck Bird Sanctuary at 2:42 p.m. Saturday on the report of three alpacas who had fallen on the ice.Alpacas look like small llamas and are originally from the Andes Mountains in South America where they were domesticated by the Incas.Three have also been domesticated by a resident of Marblehead Neck. Rice said he did some research on the animals and learned they could be potty trained so they can live in a house. These three chose a different destination…somehow making it to the pond in the bird sanctuary. Unfortunately, the animals’ agility climbing among high, rocky Andean peaks is apparently superior to their agility on ice.”They just slid down and then can’t get themselves back up – they kept trying and kept flopping down again,” Rice said.So animal control called the fire department to come and help. The alpacas’ unidentified owner and an assistant held the animals’ heads as firefighters slid blankets under the alpacas – which Rice said were about the size and weight of a deer. The firefighters then slid the alpaca-laden blankets to shore.The rescue took about 45 minutes, Rice reported, and no alpacas were injured.Nor were any firefighters. Rice said he learned alpacas also spit at each other to establish a pecking order, but the animals apparently had respect for the authority of the Marblehead Fire Department.”It went really smoothly,” Rice said. “There was nothing extraordinary about it except the fact that it was rescue of an alpaca… and you don’t see that every day.”