Over the weekend, residents of Fleming Island, Florida mourned the loss of a well-loved local animal, a year-old alpaca that had resided in a shared field outside Creekside Animal Hospital. The cause of death? A junk food feast straight out of stoned your stoned preteen dreams, with animal crackers, Doritos, Cheese Nips, and peanuts counting among the lethal buffet.
The small animal hospital posted a melancholy update to its Facebook page on Saturday, informing the community that the apparently unnamed alpaca had succumbed to a really bad stomach ache precipitated by the flagrant junk food-dumping habits of a local man.
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“We have had a problem with a gentlemen in a blue car constantly dumping inappropriate food into the field several times per week,” the post read. “This last visit, he dumped 3 boxes of animal crackers, 1 large bag of Doritos, 2 large boxes of cheese nips and 2 bags of whole peanuts.”
“Most of the time, we hope the food is eaten up by the herd and no one gets ‘too much,’” it continued. “This was the first time peanuts were dumped. The alpacas are fed peanut hay every day and the little guy didn’t know any better and he overindulged.”
At press time, the post had garnered 134 comments, 90 shares and 48 “mad faces,” with residents expressing their fury at the Cheese Nip-dumper.
“All because some jerkface wants to be a big fat jerkface! How very very sad,” opined Jeri Freeman.
“I think the man choosed [sic] the wrong alpacas to mess with,” Maxie Lovell Gregory added. “We shold [sic] throw the little one a good old fashioned wake.”
The gentleman in question has not been identified, though comments on the post indicate that the community has its eyes peeled for the man, who has been known to dump trash at other locations including a nearby elementary school.
“I see all the trash he leaves, sometimes he throws is over the fence sometimes throws it on school grounds,” Kristin Moore wrote. “I’ll be keeping an extra eye out.”
I think we can all relate to the plight of the young alpaca, who simply couldn’t hold back in the face of an unexpected bounty that hit all the right notes of salty, sweet, crunchy and oily. More scientifically, he fell victim to endotoxemia, leading to hemorrhagic shock and severe diarrhea. The hospital did all they could to save him, even performing a blood transfusion from the alpaca’s father, but to no avail.
“We are going to miss that little guy a lot,” the hospital’s post read.
RIP baby alpaca. And let us all hold him within our hearts, remembering to practice moderation on our next drunken, late-night bodega junk food mission.
