Nubin Nubin
ILR # 52383 (guanaco subregistry)
male b.10-81 ... d.10-28-96
purebred guanaco; parents unknown (Wildlife Safari stock)
Nubin was to be our guanaco stud, but we never located one or more purebred females who were actually breeding quality. Nubin was 42.5" at the withers, and 260 pounds of very hard muscle. He died of liver failure due to a massive tumor.
Nubin was not handled at all for the first seven years of his life. Although gaining his trust was a long and difficult task, he completed basic training with marks as good as any llama, and could be handled and receive medical treatment in the pasture and without a lead. Although Nubin showed promise as a packer and over obstacles, we simply never seemed to find the time to advance his training further. We now regret that we didn't make the time.
Nubin liked apples, teasing other llamas, showing off his self-proclaimed superiority, and pointing out where the fence is weak through unauthorized explorations of the back portion of our property. He was a unique individual, always very much alive, and we felt his sudden loss keenly, and in many ways.
A "nubin" is a family word for "thingamajigger," more specifically, the little round plastic screw covers in vehicle interiors. In part because llamas (especially their feet) originally looked pretty strange (thingamajiggery) to us, we decided that Nubin would be a great name for our first llama. It so happened that our first llama already had a perfectly fine name, but when Nubin arrived with the highly unimaginative name "Guanaco", we figured it was time to make use of "Nubin" (which we had already been using to preface the names of all part-guanacoes we'd acquired), thus Nubin became "Nubin Nubin."