An Important National Event: Llamas

Today I went to the basement for my afternoon break today at work and found the television I like to sit next to playing Fox News. This isn’t unusual, as the guy who usually sits there before me likes to watch that station. I usually switch it off or change it to the silly game show my friends and I like to watch. But not today. Today Fox News was providing live coverage of a suburban llama chase.

I gave the headline a double take, but it was real. On a day in which the FCC voted to approve new net neutrality rules and videos of ISIS members smashing Iraq’s ancient artifacts circulated elsewhere, a national news station was using air time, significant amounts of air time, to provide live video coverage of a pair of llamas of unknown origin that had gotten loose in a neighborhood in Sun City, Ariz. I’m not complaining. I’m sure it was more valuable than what Fox News would have been broadcasting about legitimate current events. I sat down in a purple arm chair and for the first time in my life, watched Fox News with an expression of utter glee spreading over my face.

This was straight out of “Anchorman 2,” people, except better because it was real and it didn’t require you to sit through “Anchorman 2.”

By the time I got there, the anchors were clearly running out of things to say about llamas. I know this, because one of the anchors stated, “I’m running out of things to say about llamas,” and had his intern look some stuff up on Google. But as inane as everyone knew it was, there those two llamas were, capering around parks and city streets, darting out of the way of lassos, delighting millions of people across the world. The black llama got caught first–way to enforce stereotypes, Fox–which prompted this headline to scroll across the screen, word for word: “Black llama in custody; white llama still on the loose.”

And how I cheered that white llama on. How I’m sure the world cheered that white llama on. It darted out of the reach of its would-be-captors at top llama speeds. It ran through what little traffic was left like it had the rightest of all the ways in the world. A man with a lasso in the back of a pickup passed by, missing it by inches. “Close, but that llama’s better than you,” a reporter quipped. I have never agreed with a Fox News reporter more.

Unfortunately, the pickup circled back and the chase was over. I watched the aftermath as the llamas were walked over to waiting trucks, defeated but not broken.

I think I’m going to start a movement seeking their release from unjust custody.

#freethellamas