Anyone who has ever met a lama face to face will tell you that there is no animal with a more self-important look about it. Perhaps this is because of what we do with them. While mules are out plowing fields, lamas remain in their pens, eating. While pigs might get slaughtered for Christmas dinner, lamas remain in their pens, eating. While hens have to keep up a certain number of eggs per day in order to avoid the inside of an oven, lamas remain in their pens, eating. A lama's only concern comes when it's time to shear its wool, and for the rest of the time a farmhand is inside the lama's pen, cleaning it, while the lama remains—eating.

Said farmhand might start wondering about what it would be like to be a lama (between raking up its droppings and moving them to the dung pile). Does a lama consider itself better than other animals by birthright or elected status? Was it born great or did it have greatness thrust upon it?

From the lama's perspective (the farmhand reasons), it must be the former. After all, there has never been a time in the lama's life when it was not given some sort of preferential treatment. Since it was born, the lama has never had to plow a field, has never had to lay a certain number of eggs per day. In fact, no matter what it does—no matter how bad its behavior gets—its needs are always taken care of.

Perhaps this is why the farmhand keeps hearing stories about how lamas tend to develop the habit of biting. Maybe they're simply testing the waters to see how much they can get away with. Or maybe lamas are just born nasty. It's one of those questions that a farmhand will never really know the answer to.

While mucking out the pen, a farmhand will likely remember someone telling him that lamas are some of the pickiest eaters on a farm. This is odd to the farmhand, considering the amount of dung he's just raked up. It occurs more than once to the farmhand that, perhaps, the lama only defecates to make more work for him. And the sly look the lama keeps giving the farmhand only serves to solidify this belief.

As the last few piles of dung are scooped up and carted away, the farmhand might start wondering if, deep down, the lama is jealous of the mules and chickens. At least the mules and chickens have jobs to perform; at least they're contributing something to the farmyard society. Perhaps the lama spends its days staring out over the other pens, watching the other animals work and raise families. It must look like a hard life to a lama, but at least the animals are happy. They have friends. All the lama has is Cocoa the alpaca three pens away, and Cocoa is more of a lackey than a friend (at least it seems that way to the farmhand).

Maybe the biting comes from pent up spite. Maybe the farmhand has to work this hard because the lama simply doesn't like being better than everything else. Maybe the lama's arrogance comes from lax parenting, or so the farmhand might conjecture.

But, at the end of the day, at least the farmhand has done his job. Even if it makes the arrogant lama swell with self-righteous pride to see a mere human pick up its crap, the pen is indeed clean and both the farmhand and lama know it. The farmhand puts the wheelbarrow back in the shed and leans the rake against the side just in time to see a pile of fresh dung marring the otherwise pristine ground of the lama's pen.

Perhaps that's life, the farmhand thinks.