Look: Llama escapes Maine property to avoid dental exam

July 12 (UPI) -- A llama bolted through his owner's gate in Bangor, Maine, and took a stroll through the neighborhood in an apparent attempt to avoid having his teeth cleaned.

Rina Pesner, owner of the Rebels Homestead farm in Bangor, said she opened the gate to her animals' enclosure to let a veterinarian come in to give her llama, Jeffrey, a dental cleaning.

Jeffrey bolted through the open gate and took off up the road.

"Jeffrey saw it as an opportunity to make a jailbreak and just ran right past me up to Stillwater," Pesner told WABI-TV. "He just wanted to get out of the field and see what was up by the road, but he's generally pretty good."

Bangor Police Department Animal Control Officer Trish Bruen responded to a report of a llama on the loose in the area.

"It is possible that Jeffrey hasn't kept up on brushing and flossing twice a day and was embarrassed that the whole barn would soon know," the police department said in a Facebook post.

Pesner said Jeffrey returned home on his own just before Bruen arrived. She said he came home from a different direction than the one he left in.

"I'm not sure of his adventure path, but he came down from the other side of our house where he left from," Pesner said.

Pesner said Jeffrey's brief escape was her farm's first since she bolstered her fences about two years ago. Prior to the upgrade, two of her pigs went out for a wander and ended up being brought home in a police car.