Lanyards And Llamas - And Alpacas - Go Together Well

At first glance, lanyards and llamas would appear to have much in common. Both can carry things for their owners’ benefit. Both can be very attractive. And both start with the letter L. Sounds like a perfect match.



But are they? Would llamas wear lanyards? Would lanyards be seen in public with llamas? And what’s up with that extra L? L if I know. Ogden Nash might be able to answer that one.



Lanyards and llamas could be a great match. Lanyards are perfect for carrying I.D. badges, keys, pens, ear protectors, even water bottles. Llamas are gentle creatures who would seem to be quite willing to wear I.D. badges, and certainly could use convenient water bottles at times.



Lanyards as a group are just about as easy-going as llamas, so they should get along well. Lanyards spend most of their time just hanging around, so they’d probably be happy to spend time with laid-back llamas.



And let’s not even bring in the Dalai Lama, which opens up a whole other avenue of inquiry. Would the Dalai Lama wear lanyards? It doesn’t seem likely. Would the Dalai Lama visit a llama? Maybe. Would a llama wear lanyards to go see the Dalai Lama? Who knows?



Then there’s the elusive rama-lama-ding-dong. This little-known single-L lama (no relation to the Dalai Lama) is difficult to observe in the wild. It may well be mythical along the lines of the Loch Ness monster. Without knowing whether it actually has a neck, it’s difficult to determine whether it would wear lanyards. "Nessie," on the other hand, would make an excellent candidate for lanyards, possibly with an I.D. badge attached.



And speaking of necks, the llama cousins known as alpacas have shorter ones. They would be perfect candidates for wearing lanyards as well. Most likely, they’d prefer woven lanyards, possibly in fancy colors.



When it comes to colors, llamas come in several, including bay, black, cinnamon and appaloosa among others. Lanyards are available in even more colors, and can be customized to carry promotional logos or messages. That’s a major difference between them – it’s tough to customize llamas, easy to customize lanyards.



No matter how appealing the idea may be, though, there is one major catch to the idea of llamas wearing lanyards -- it’s really hard to get past that darn opposable thumb concept. They’re basically a requirement for wearing lanyards. But given their generally sunny nature, it seems likely llamas would certainly try to wear lanyards if given the opportunity.



And there’s another source of likely llama and lanyard interaction. The official school mascot of Bard College at Simon’s Rock is, you guessed it, the llama. The student newspaper of the college located in Great Barrington, Mass. is the Llama Ledger. And many colleges have lanyards for sale in their bookstores with the official school mascot imprinted on them. So llama lanyards are likely at Simon’s Rock.



This article was brought to you by the letter L. Twice. So save the drama for your llama, and in the immortal words of Sgt. Phil Esterhaus, llet’s be careful out there.