An ad appeared on craigslist this week (which has been subsequently retracted) which read:
Baby Llama for sale
A six-month old baby male llama (answers to the name of Jesus) is available to a good home. Very friendly and would make a great pet if you have the space. Will sell for $200 or would be interested in exchanging for a sheep, short-finned eel, or Nigerian dwarf goat.
Call 530 - xxx - xxxx
Does this sound a little crazy to you? I, for one, have yet to see a llama in Davis (cats, dogs, and the occasional chickens...yes. But llamas, no). The fact that this advert was retracted made me think this might all be a coded message for some drugs deal. I initially thought that the Nigerian dwarf goat must have been a made up creature, but as the link will reveal, it is real (they even have their own association).
The final part of this ad that puzzles me (well, lets just pass over the fact that someone named a llama 'Jesus') is the fact that two of the three creatures in the proposed swap deal seem suitable replacements, but the third seems very odd. I admit ignorance of taxonomic classifications, but goats, sheep, and llamas all seem to have a certain 'wooly' quality to me. Eels, however, seem to be the odd man out here (odd eel out?). Swap a llama for an eel?!? An eel??? Again I profess ignorance whether 'short-finned' eels are substantially different to any other type of eel ('long-finned'???) but I do wonder whether eels make suitable pets. I guess this could be a household that loves sushi and is in search of some extra ingredients? Maybe they have one of those spoilt kids who has moved on from "Daddy, daddy...I want a pony and I want one NOW" to "Ponies are sooooo last year daddy. Now I must have a llama....or maybe an eel".
Only in Davis!
I hope this ended up in the "Best Of Craigslist" section.
Posted by: Elle | October 28, 2008 at 10:56 AM