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The e-mails keep coming. “Where are the alpacas?” everyone wants to know.
The answer: Greenville, Va. Four hours and 15 minutes from their former home, off Ridge and Mallard Creek Church roads, said owner Erin McCarthy.
During the winter, she moved her 250 alpacas from their 11-acre home near the Highland Creek subdivision to 300 acres on a former horse farm in western Virginia. Yes, she needed the room. And a future leg of Interstate 485 is headed straight for the animals' old digs, which she leased.
But the departure has left neighbors crestfallen.
“You are missed in CLT!” reads the title of a recent e-mail to McCarthy from Liz Sweet, who remembered when area mothers and children pet and fed adult and baby alpacas at the farm, called McCarthy's BelleauWood Farms Alpacas.
“Even the drive past the farm had become something many of us looked forward to, our children especially, on an almost daily basis,” Sweet wrote.
McCarthy, who raised and bred alpacas for sale but didn't mind when people stopped by to check out her herd, said she's received about 50 e-mails like that and was “blown away.”
“These were not people we knew or had any personal relationship with,” she said. “They said, ‘It's just ruined my morning commute to have you leave.' ”
She thinks the attachment for commuters was the chance to inch past a “bit of nature” still left in University City while stuck in traffic.
But it wasn't just road warriors seeking a time-out from the daily grind who stopped to look. There was a constant flow of visitors – residents showing off the alpacas to relatives, kids working on school projects and the “Sunday after-church traffic,” McCarthy said.
Why are people so attracted to these camel-like animals that look like something from a Star Wars movie?
“They seemed like such quirky, fun creatures,” e-mailed Kristi Gouch, who said she drove by BelleauWood every day with her family to check on the alpacas.
Alpacas are highly intelligent, friendly animals, McCarthy said. Their hair, known as fiber, is used to make yarn for recreational knitting, as well as cashmere-like clothing.
McCarthy started with two alpacas in 1996 and no significant livestock experience as a side gig to her marketing research and customer analysis job at Bank of America.
“I had a 10-year plan to leave the corporate world, and my alpaca business did so well, I left in seven,” she said.
Along the way, she's been helped by her daughter, Megan, now at N.C. State University pursuing degrees in animal science and textile apparel.
“She's on the super mega track to having the ultimate alpaca career,” said Erin McCarthy.
Lest anyone think the McCarthys have abandoned the N.C. alpaca scene entirely, the family is still working with N.C. colleges to establish a commercial fiber processing plant in state.
On a more personal level, those who lament the alpacas' departure are invited to visit them in Greenville, where McCarthy has resurrected BelleauWood. The new farm is not only bigger but boasts a bed-and-breakfast, perfect for alpaca-deprived Charlotteans.
