Favorite blog from December 7.

Well, haven’t had time to do much porch sitting lately but have found time to get my pansies nestled in their pots. Been running errands for the carpenter and his carpenter wife and moving things around in the house for new flooring and painting. The “handeymen couple” are so congenital and work together effortlessly like Chief and I did at The Russel Record office. Stew and I are enjoying them on their lunch breaks. We’ve all been swapping funny stories, spewing laughter in the warm fall sunshine. I’m sitting in the swing and they’re perched on the porch steps. Got a good laugh with the camel story. I think I actually won the story telling contest today!

One summer day, our daughter Rosalyn was out in the front yard. Stew was playing around in the yard, too, when he saw a camel slowly walk up behind Rosalyn. He says “Tootie (our nickname for her), there’s a camel behind you!” “No, it’s not!,” she replies. Stew high tails it in the house, all excited and a little scared, telling us there’s a camel in the front yard. No sooner do the words come out of Stew’s mouth than here comes Tootie running in the house screaming, “Daddy, Daddy, a llama’s in the yard! It snorted on my back!”

I’m sitting there trying to take this in and Stew and Tootie start fighting over whether it’s a camel or llama! I get up trying not to laugh since Tootie is obviously traumatized by the snorting and no kidding, I see 2 chubby policemen chasing a camel down the railroad track! Can’t make this up! Soon a police car stops and asks if we have seen a camel and two policemen. I reply, trying to be serious, “Last time I saw them they were chasing the camel up the railroad track toward town.”

The camel was caught and walked back home by his master and kept his starring roll in Christmas nativity scenes. We’d see him in his pasture on our trips to our family cemetery and always smile remembering his visit to our house.

I love researching topics on the internet or on in one of Chief’s 20 plus sets of encyclopedias and the camel story made me wonder how much a camel cost. You can buy yourself a camel from $500 to $10,000. Take a trip to the UK and purchase a racing camel for $55,000 and if he wins lots of races he might go for $2,000,000 — highest price ever paid for a camel!

Just so you know, a camel has the emotions and intelligence of an eight year old child and is inquisitive and affectionate and attention seeking. They are really marvels of nature, drinking 30 gallons of water in ten minutes and able to run 40 miles an hour.

They compete in beauty pageants in Dubai where a camel sold for 16.5 million dollars which is 4.5 million in US dollars. Let us pray!

Makes me remember the Sportplex buffalo that escaped and wandered in the woods behind our house but that is a story for another day.