Llama Love

When friends and colleagues learn how Peter Giustina II spends time with his wife, Melissa, the first thing they ask is how often he gets spit on.

But he protects the reputation of his personal pack of llamas and alpacas: "Sometimes they spit at each other," he says, "but they don't spit at us."

A senior accountant at LarsonAllen in Fort Myers, Peter moved in 2005 to Alva, where he and Melissa bought a six-and-a-half-acre property with a 5,000-square-foot barn, tax-exempted for breeding or grazing animals. The Giustinas aren't really horse people, and "the cow thing didn't seem like our kind of thing," says Peter, 28. They found one llama and one alpaca in an ad in a local paper, and started their herd.

Both woolly species, which are related to each other and to camels, graze by shearing the grass, rather than pulling it out by the root. "They're basically like little lawn mowers," Peter says.

Alpacas are valued for their fur, which is softer than cotton and sells for around $8 per pound. The Giustinas haven't gotten the clippings to market yet; their first attempt at shearing yielded only a few pounds of wool.

Ultimately they hope to turn their fluffy, furry pets-which now number nine, including one "llamalpaca" that resulted from an interbreed liaison-into a cottage industry. They plan to increase the herd and sell the offspring, which can go for thousands of dollars apiece with a good pedigree. Giustina estimates that the property will support up to 25 animals.

For now, the couple just enjoys the peaceful, friendly creatures.

"They're neat to have," Giustina says. "You can go out there and sit in the grass with them, and they'll come and hang out with you."