When a llama attacks! A true North Texas story of survival

By MELODY McDONALD

mjmcdonald@star-telegram.com

James "Buzzy" Steele is having trouble getting around these days.

The 59-year-old Blum resident has had seven heart attacks and is on a waiting list for a heart transplant.

But that’s not what’s slowing him down.

On Sunday, Steele got attacked by a friend’s pet llama while he was tending to 87 goats on property in rural Hill County. Steele is now sporting crutches and hundreds of stitches — his wife said nearly 700 — in his right leg.

"That sapsucker just went crazy," Steele said Thursday before heading into a doctor’s appointment. "He run into me and knocked me down, and then he grabbed my leg with his mouth and went to jerking on me."

Steele’s friend Terry Flowers, 54, witnessed the attack and came to his rescue.

"I just happened to be on the opposite side of the fence and I happened to have a pipe in my hand," Flowers said. "I cleared the fence and just started beating on him."

Flowers said that when the llama stopped attacking, he loaded Steele into a truck and raced to Lake Whitney Medical Center, the nearest hospital, about eight miles away.

"He was bleeding very bad," Flowers said. "He was in trouble."

On the way, Steele called his wife, Robbi, 48, owner of the Redneck Grill & Bar in Blum, a tiny Hill County town about 40 miles south of Fort Worth.

At first, the wife said, she couldn’t understand what her husband was saying. It sounded as if he said he had been attacked by a lawn mower.

"I thought he said lawn mower," she said. "He said, 'No, I got attacked by a llama and I’m bleeding pretty bad.’ The llama had grabbed his leg and was shaking him around the pasture."

Because Steele was on a blood thinner, his wife said, she was worried that he would bleed out. She raced from Blum to the hospital, praying all the way.

"I was scared to death," she said. "When he just gets a nick, he bleeds a lot. We’ve had a lot of scares, but we never imagined he would be attacked by a llama."

It took several hours for doctors to control the bleeding and stitch up Steele, but he went home later that day.

The llama, a 300-plus-pound 6-footer whose name was Spanky, didn’t fare so well.

Shortly after the attack, the llama’s owner, Michael Harden, shot it to death. Later, on the advice of the local sheriff, the llama’s head was sent to the state health department in Austin to be tested for rabies. The results are pending.

Kelli Howie, 41, Harden’s wife, said the couple had Spanky for about two years before he got out of the fence and ventured onto the neighbor’s property. Before Sunday, he had never showed any real aggression, she said.

"My grandkids rode on his back and did everything with him," she said. "I have always heard they were spitters, but he never spit on anyone except for my sister — and if you knew my sister, you would understand why he spit on her."

She can’t believe what happened: "A llama? Who would have thunk it?"

Meanwhile, just about everybody in Blum — population 440 — is buzzing about the freak attack.

"Oh, they are really wearing me out," Steele said. "But who in the hell would have ever thought that sucker would go off like that?"

The ribbing continued at the Redneck Grill & Bar.

"Yesterday, we served quesadillas and they asked me if it was llama meat," Robbi Steele said. "It’s the biggest story in town — for now."

MELODY McDONALD, 817-390-7386

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