The "lone llama of Pikes Peak," the baby llama that survived a month on Pikes Peak's chilly windswept slopes, is now safe and warm.
 
The llama was captured Friday afternoon after a busy month, it frequently amused riders on the Pikes Peak Cog Railway, running close to the train, but also alarmed llama owners around the nation, who worried it would become food for a mountain lion or die from the cold.
 
The male llama is thin and may lose its ears to frostbite but is otherwise fine, said rescuer Tracy Ducharme, a llama owner from Black Forest.
 
And the lone llama even has a name now.
 
"I dubbed him "Homer" because of his little odyssey. And he's going home," she said.
 
Actually, no one knows where "home" is for the 6-month-old llama.
 
It was first spotted 3 Sep 2009 by passengers on the Cog, and has since been roaming the peak's south slope, living off alpine vegetation and trying unsuccessfully to make friends with a herd of bighorn sheep.
 
Llamas are native to the Andes Mountains of South America, and are often kept as livestock or pets here.
 
Officials don't know how the llama got on the 14,115 foot mountain, but nobody has come forward to claim it.
 
Despite its long time on the lam, eluding capture on at least one occasion, when some Cog employees and a Pikes Peak Highway ranger tried to rope it, capturing it Friday proved relatively easy.
 
Ducharme and another llama owner, Mike Shealy, also of Black Forest, brought two llamas to the summit and walked down the railroad tracks, hoping the loose llama's herd instincts would send it running.
 
They tried that approach last weekend but never saw the llama.
 
They split up and, early in the afternoon, Ducharme saw the white llama in the distance, about a half-mile below the summit on the south side of the peak, playing and enjoying a sunny but brutally windy day on the mountain.
 
"He was just being a baby and running around down there and thinking about coming to see us," she said.
 
The llama ran across the rocky tundra and nuzzled her llama Dancer, seemingly thrilled to finally have some company.
 
Then it tried to nurse from Dancer.
 
Dancer, a male, was not thrilled with the idea.
 
Ducharme simply slipped a rope around its neck, then a harness, and the llama's adventure was over.
 
It trudged with little protest up to a waiting trailer.
 
"I am so happy. I am going to do an e-mail blast and tell everyone, we got him!" she said.
 
Unfortunately for Shealy, he was out of cell phone range and proceeded with his plan to walk the entire length of the tracks, looking for the llama.
 
Late in the afternoon, the Cog sent a train with a flat-bed car up for his llama, Shasta, which was either injured or refused to keep walking.
 
Details were sketchy Friday afternoon.
 
Ducharme plans to keep the lone llama on her farm for now, then find it a permanent home.
 
Such has been the concern from llama owners all over, she doubts she will have any trouble.
 
"They're just intelligent. They're really easy to keep. They're full of personality," she said.
 
"People that are dog lovers, if they heard about a dog in trouble, they'd want to help him."
 
"We're llama lovers and I think it would be hard for him to survive on his own."
 
R. Scott Rappold.