Sandra J. Brauer, age 10, of Niles, Ohio, for her question:
Where do we get alpaca?
The Incas of Peru used these silken fibers to weave delicate shawls and other fine woolen garments. The Spaniards introduced the luxurious material to the Old World ¬but supplies were limited and weavers soon took to blending them with sheep's wool. Supplies still are limited. This is why most fabric sold as alpaca usually is not entirely alpaca. As a rule, these rare luxurious fibers are blended with the finest fleece of sheep, with the hair of angora goats or rabbits and perhaps with some of the super fine synthethic materials.
In our stores, textiles made from pure alpaca fibers are hard to come by. But not in certain parts of Bolivia and Peru. There the people often wear everyday cloaks and shawls woven entirely from soft silky alpaca fibers. There on the altiplano, the high plain, around Lake Titicaca live the herds of sheep like alpaca that supply the fleecy fibers to make these luxurious fabrics. Once each year the shepherds shear their fleecy coats and there is never enough for everyone who would like to buy it.
The alpaca is a rather hoity toity character who refuses to descend from his lofty home, two or three miles high in the Andes Mountains. The haughty expression on his solemn face reminds one of the camel. Actually, the alpaca is a small, humpless cousin of the big bulky camel. He shares the slopes of the Andes with the llama, the guanaco and vicuna and they also are small humpless members of the camel family. All these animals have soft silky hair and the alpaca`s is second best. The softest and silkiest belongs to the vicuna. People who know claim that human hairs are like wires when compared with the fine hairs of the vicuna.
The alpaca's hair is almost as fine, but he is more friendly to people. For centuries, shepherds of the high Andes have tended their alpaca flocks and sheared their silken coats. The shearing season comes around when we are having fall weather and spring comes to the lands south of the equator. By then the alpaca coats almost brush the ground. The hairs are eight to 24 inches long. Some of the largest animals yield seven pounds of alpaca fiber apiece. After shearing, the hair grows and by next year they are ready to welcome another crew cut.
These small camel cousins are cud chewers that feed on grasses and scrubby that grow on the pampas and the lofty slopes of South America. In the wild, they roam in herds and one papa protects several wives and numerous children. Domesticated alpaca depend on the shepherd to lead them to pasture and protect them from harm.
The alpaca looks rather like a large sheep with a long neck and long straight hair instead of curly fleece. His luxurious coat may be black, white or brown or a mixture of these colors. His cousin the llama is trained as a beast of burden and sometimes the people eat his meat. But the valuable alpaca is treated as a wool specialist. He is not expected to carry burdens and his meat is rarely if ever eaten. The mothers produce only enough milk for their babes and yield none for dairy products.