As pets, investments, llamas are good as gold : Some owners find the friendly animals they acquired as a hobby are paying off as a business.

The warnings are clear:

“Never look a llama in the eye,” advises Donna Livengood of Asheville, N.C. “You’ll fall in love.”

“Llamas are like potato chips,” declares Tracy Pearson, whose llama herd here is approaching 80. “You can’t stop at just one.”

By all accounts, the woolly, long-necked, happy-faced creatures are so lovable, beautiful and easy to care for they are virtually irresistible.

As money-makers they are not bad, either. Several years ago, Pearson and her husband, Jack, sold a young female llama to a Seattle businessman for $46,500.

“It started out to be a hobby thing,” said Jack, who operates a clothing business in Atlanta, “and now it’s developed into (Tracy’s) business.”

Llama sales nationwide totaled $15.2 million in 1991, a year when one llama fetched $190,000 at auction, according to Llama Life, a Durango, Colo., publication. Female llamas, valued as producers, accounted for $12.2 million of that total. Some people buy one or two llamas as companions; others buy them specifically to breed, show or sell.

The Pearsons and the Livengoods, like other Southerners, are catching a wave of interest in llamas, which are related to camels but are smaller and lack humps. The West leads the nation in llama-raising, but Southerners have jumped into the effort, eschewing more conventional agricultural ventures such as horses, hogs and cotton.

Typically, according to breeders, one can buy a female llama, breed her and sell her offspring for more than the mother cost--assuming both parents have good lines, coats and bearing. Some experts advise against owning a lone llama because the animals like company.

It is impossible to know exactly how many llamas there are, although several organizations have compiled numbers from members’ reports.

In Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, the herd numbers reported by members of the International Llama Assn. totaled 1,004 in 1990, a 31% increase from the previous year. Nationwide, the members’ llamas numbered almost 19,000 in 1990 (some experts say the current total is close to 40,000), according to the Denver-based association. That total included more than 2,700 llamas in California.

Kathy Price, editor of Llama Life, says the increasing numbers of llamas in Dixie completes a geographical pattern that began in the West, then spread to the North, the East and, now, the South.

Llama-like members of the camel family lived on the North American plains 40 million years ago, but they were wiped out during the Ice Age. Migratory species survived in South America, and they were domesticated in Peru’s Andes Mountains thousands of years ago for use mostly as pack animals. Llama lore has it that America’s “seed herd” of native animals began in the 1920s, when newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst imported llamas for his private zoo at San Simeon, Calif.

Here in Ellijay, in the hills of northern Georgia, security is tight at the 65-acre Pearson Pond Ranch & Llama Co. A metal gate, surveillance camera and electrified fence keep out intruders. Inside, dozens of llamas, separated according to age and sex, lounge, cavort, nurse, graze--and nuzzle human visitors’ faces.

“Offer your face, not your hand,” Tracy Pearson advised one visitor, showing him the technique as one llama kissed her and another rubbed faces with the bearded visitor.

A llama weighs between 18 and 35 pounds at birth, after an average gestation period of 11 1/2 months, and lives about 20 years. An adult weighs 300 to 450 pounds and stands about 4 feet high at the shoulder.

Patrice Cook of Covington, Ga., who has been raising llamas for eight years and has about 40 of them, said llamas are “quite intelligent,” easily trained and “a pleasure to be around.”

Unless they spit on you. Spitting apparently is a llama’s way of saying it does not like you.

Donna Livengood and her husband, Gale, run Windsong Mountain Inn in Asheville and have 15 llamas roaming their mountainside property.

The Livengoods plan a trekking operation, using llamas as pack animals. Donna said the use of llamas is environmentally correct because “they have soft feet, so they don’t tear up the trails as much as a hiker in boots.”

According to Llama Life, the average sale price for a female llama last year was $10,573; the average male brought $6,989. Someone paid $190,000 for one male; the highest-priced female went for $82,000.

Clearly, these exceptionally bred llamas are not in most people’s price league. For the not-so-rich, a llama of less than star quality can be had for hundreds of dollars. And experts say their upkeep is cheap: around $200 a year to keep one in grain, hay and good health.

Whatever the cost, Cook thinks llamas are worth it. “Llamas are a real good investment, plus, they are a pleasure to be around,” she said.

Researcher Edith Stanley contributed to this story.