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Our smaller alpaca is dead, and it's on me. I left some old wire fencing half-buried in the ground below the school. I meant to get back there with the wirecutters. But I didn't.

Then C. worried about seeing only one alpaca at a time – I went to the barn and saw the other one. Or who I thought was the other one. I figured they'd had a tiff.

So we let it go. But it didn't feel right.

I finally figured out we were seeing the same one over here, and at the barn. So I went looking for the other, and found him strangling in the wire, where he had been for days in the rain and cold, just below the garden. Fuck.

C. pulled him free, and we sat with him, giving him water and molasses and keeping him warm.  He stood for a little while. Em and Richard brought up electrolytes and a kerosene heater. I sat with him overnight, humming. He got weaker. We called the vet and two young women came and hauled him out on a blanket sling and kept him overnight on IVs. They didn't give us much hope, and today they decided to euthanize him. They said he had some contributing problem, maybe congenital. We brought him home.

Animals die on farms. Shoot, animals are killed on farms. But this was directly connected to my stupidity. I left the wire; I didn't recognize him; I didn't look. And the whole time this big gentle creature under my care was trapped, dying.

I don't want to think about it. I want to crawl inside a cheesecake and forget all about it. But cheesecake has gluten in it. And gnawing on a salad will do nothing for my guilt. Pity I'm not a drinker.

So I'm sitting here bawling, choking on shitty Paleo brownies.

And how much of that is for poor Tom? It's all probably for me, my guilt, my MS, my baby grandson's cerebral palsy, all the events of this past crap year.

Please don't leave me any kind comments. I couldn't take it.