Heidi Price pulled up to her home last week after a long day working as a psychiatric nurse and found her road in Derbyshire, England lit up by police cars.
When she got out of her car, she saw officers and her partner, Graham Oliver.
“I was met at the front door,” Price said, “being told my llamas were heroes.”
Oliver said he had let their dogs out on their farm and was alarmed to hear their llamas making warning cries in the distance. He followed the noise to investigate the commotion.
“It’s quite a weird and haunting sound,” Oliver said. “It sounds like someone laughing.”
In their field, he found the family’s eight llamas encircling a man in a black puffer jacket who had apparently hopped the fence to get onto the farm. Oliver would learn the man was using it as a cut-through to evade police. The man seemed terrified, Oliver added.
“I wanted to know what he was doing in my field,” Oliver said. “And he said he’d come through a hole in the fence.”
Oliver asked the man to walk to the fence with him and show him where there was a hole, worried that one of the animals — they also have cattle and peacocks — would escape there. When they got back to the fence, though, the man unexpectedly scrambled over it and ran, Oliver said.
Oliver said he had noticed police in the area and wondered if there was a connection to the fence jumper.
“So I went in their direction, waved the torch, attracted their attention and asked if they were after a chap in a black puffer jacket and they said yes they were, and not to approach him because he could be dangerous,” Oliver said.
The man had allegedly stolen packets of tobacco from a woman nearby. Oliver pointed the police in the right direction, and he was soon arrested.
In a statement, Derbyshire police said officers arrived on the scene shortly after getting a call at 6 p.m. on Feb. 2.
“We were called to reports of a woman having a number of packets of tobacco stolen from her in Mansfield Road, South Normanton,” the statement said.
The suspect, who is in his 30s, was charged with theft and has been released on bail, according to a statement. Police did not release more information, or the man’s name.
Price and Oliver both said they did not have a more detailed account of the crime, and they also did not know why police said the suspect might be dangerous.
Price said her llamas should get formal recognition for their assistance in the arrest, even if the crime was petty theft.
“They acted responsibly, efficiently, in an organized manner,” Price said. “Quite frankly, I think they did pretty good police work.”
Llamas are often used by farmers as guard animals for flocks of sheep or chickens because they are instinctively protective — galloping toward any unfamiliar person or animal and surrounding them.
“They’re around 6 feet tall, and they’re intimidating,” Price said, though she added that they wouldn’t actually attack anyone. “Their only defense mechanism is spitting.”
Price noted this isn’t the family’s first farm adventure. Their cows have briefly run off, their bulls have slipped out and a llama once escaped and tried to get on a bus.
Price and Oliver reluctantly rescued the llamas several years ago, when a friend of theirs was struggling to find a home for them. The couple didn’t plan to keep them, but as they started to work with the animals and train them, they grew attached. Price also has trained them as therapy animals for neurodivergent patients.
“They are absolutely incredible animals,” Price said. “They even come in the house when they’re ill and at Christmas.”
“They’re really gentle,” Price said. “They’re very intelligent.”
Given how trainable llamas are, Price said perhaps they could be even more suitable for police work than dogs.
“Mine had the strategic positioning, the calm eye contact, the patience of saints, and they had a nonaggressive approach, and they still managed to catch [a] criminal without restraining anyone,” Price said.
Price said that her llamas have spent some time with police officers before, perhaps informing their llama crime-fighting instincts.
“The llamas have escaped a couple of times and the police have responded,” Price said. “So I reckon they’re probably considering themselves even.”
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