In response to a call to do “something different” for the Peru blog, Honors College Fellow and psych major Summer Webers channeled a vicuña. Everything you read below is completely true.
It was a perfectly overcast day. We were grazing in our field beneath the Andes mountains when we heard the first sounds of a bus approaching. We lifted our long necks to watch the bus pass by. The bus came closer and closer, with a load of Americanos staring wide-eyed at us. Oh no. Americanos. College students. We needed to get moving.
I signaled my hurd to cross the road to the other side of the field when I heard the tires of the bus come to a screeching halt. I spun my head around and saw a mass of college students and two crazy cameramen spill out of the bus. We were losing precious time.
Click. Click. Click. Their cameras captured our every movement as we drifted farther from the pack of Americanos. Then, they began to approach us. We inched back with every step they took forward.
“Take deep breaths,” I told myself as they began to pick up the pace. These Americanos weren’t acclimated to the altitude, so surely they wouldn’t be able to move very fast without getting light-headed.
I was wrong. A couple of girls began stampeding our herd as the rest stood back and watched the scene unfold. As the girls were running toward us at full speed, hair flying and hands waving, we turned on our heels and fled into the hills.
After we covered a considerable distance, we whipped our heads around to see how much progress the girls had made, which wasn’t much. They had paused; the altitude was making them light-headed and short of breath. The other Americanos were making their way slowly back to the bus, cameras and defeat in hand. We put our heads down and continued grazing.
Victory, once again. Vicunas: 1. Americanos: 0.