Real Estate Information

There is good news about the Colorado Springs real estate market!  Click on the link below to view the video.

http://static.koaa.zope.net/includes/video/480x400_zope.swf?id=x1949200974

Here are the precious two new babies.

Christine Chiaro of RE/MAX Properties, Inc., has repeated her 2006 accomplishment of earning the Quality Service Cerified Plantinum achievement.  The award is in recognition of earning 100 percent client service satisfaction in 2007, as measured by Leading Research Corporation.

"Nothing is more important to a prospective client in selecting a professional than the service results achieved with past clients." says Larry D Romito, President and CEO of OSC.

By Al Lewis
The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 02/01/2008 06:14:27 AM MST

CHEYENNE— Willis Larson gazed across his spread a few years back and spied a baby yak struggling to hold its footing on the rolling, wind-swept hills.

A yak is an unusual sight for the plains of Wyoming, but not for Larson. He has had as many as 80 of them on the 500 acres he ranches east of Cheyenne.

This yak, however, was new. And Larson, now 69, couldn't find its mother.

Yaks are so furry that it's difficult to tell when they are pregnant. Unlike cows, which need human assistance giving birth, yaks just slip away from the herd, drop behind a hill and plop one out.

"I kept watching and I never did see the mother go over to it," he said. "I waited all day long. I even drove the herd over to (the yak). I did this three times. Nobody claimed him. I don't know whether his mother thought he was a little bit crippled and rejected him or what."

In their native Himalayas, yaks have provided people with meat, milk, clothing, fuel and shelter for thousands of years. Yaks are only beginning to catch on in the U.S. and at Denver's National Western Stock Show, where yak burgers are proudly served.

There are between 4,000 and 5,000 yaks in the U.S., according to the International Yak Association. Bison, by contrast, are counted in the hundreds of thousands, and cattle in the tens of millions. Given these numbers, it's easy to see why every yak counts.

Larson never reached any firm conclusions as to why the baby yak's mother ditched him. Larson gets to know all of his yaks and divides them between the "kind-eyed" and the "wild- eyed." Maybe it was one of those wild-eyed, irresponsible yaks with an unwanted pregnancy.

"They're just like people," Larson said. "Some of them are just . . . jerks. You've got to put them in their place every once in a while. . . . Sometimes, we have a little disagreement and I have to get out my yak stick."

Larson had been a police officer, a county sheriff and a rodeo bull rider in his day. He was not one to leave injustice unanswered. He took the yak baby into his arms and bottle-fed it for six months.

"You make the time," he said. "It was about four hours (of feeding) every four hours, night and daytime both."

Larson named him Andy, after the Andes Mountains, and took it to his city home in Cheyenne, where it grew up beside dogs.

"For a time, Andy thought he was a border collie," Larson said. "He'd jump in the truck and ride with the others."

His wife, Robbie, would take Andy with the dogs for walks around the neighborhood. "A lot of people just thought he was an ugly dog," she said.

Though orphaned, Andy grew up with privileges fellow yaks would not know: the affections of dogs and people, and frequent snacks from a crab apple tree.

One day an animal control officer knocked on the door, responding to a complaint about a yak in the yard. "He didn't write a ticket," said Larson. "He just wanted to see it."

Eventually, Andy grew so large that Larson's wife couldn't stop him when he decided to charge into the house. When she tried to hold him back, she somehow ended up riding him backward through the house. "That's when Willis lost his temper for the last time," Robbie said. "Andy had to go back to the ranch."

As Larson drove me across his fields in an old pickup truck earlier this week, Andy quickly broke away from the herd to greet us. His big black eyes beamed joy and then sadness, like he should not have to be stuck on a windy pasture with a bunch of hairy, grass-eating yaks.

Larson trades everything from livestock to vacuum-packed cuts of meat through his company, highplainsworldmarket.com.

But Andy is a part of the family. In 2004, Larson drove Andy down to the Denver stock show, where the steer won a couple of prizes. Like Wilbur, the prize-winning pig in "Charlotte's Web," Andy will live out his days on the ranch, as the other yaks around him are sold for slaughter.

Sad, since yaks are so much smarter than cows or buffalo. They know their names and come when you call them. You can ride a yak. Or you can put a rack on a yak's back and have it carry a pack and a couple of big sacks.

On the yak association's website, I found this poem, "The Love of a Baby Yak," by yak enthusiast Kathy Taylor:

"I call; And you come; With a tail raised; And at a full run. I am wrapped and hugged; With unconditional love. . . . Just never let this calf know; We eat their kind."

Al Lewis' column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Respond to Lewis at blogs.denverpost.com/. lewis, 303-954-1967 or alewis@denverpost.com.