From my archives because sometimes we just need a good laugh…

Several years ago when my handyman and his handywife were working at my house they would eat their lunch everyday perched on the front porch steps. I’d sit in the porch swing and we’d all swap funny stories, cheerfully laughing in the warm fall sunshine. Got a good laugh with my camel story. I think I actually won the story telling contest that day!

One summer day, our daughter Rosalyn was out in the front yard, taking a sun bath working on her teenage tan. Stew, our youngest son, was playing around in the yard, when he saw a camel slowly walk up behind Rosalyn. He hollered to his sister, “Tootie (our nickname for her), there’s a camel behind you!” “No, it’s not!” she replies. Stew hightails 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 terrified and screaming, “Daddy, Daddy, a llama’s in the yard! It snorted on my back!”

I’m sitting at the kitchen table trying to take this in and Stew and Tootie start fighting over whether it’s a camel or llama! I get up to look out the dining room window, trying not to laugh, since Tootie is obviously traumatized by the snorting camel and no kidding, I see two chubby policemen chasing a camel down the railroad track in front of our house! The camel in front, dancing along the crossties in a fast gait, the two policemen carrying a little rope stumbling along behind it. Can’t make this up! Soon a police car stops and asks if we’ve 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 eventually caught and walked back home by his master and kept his starring roll in the local Christmas plays and nativity scenes. We’d see him in his pasture on our trips to our family cemetery and we’d always smile remembering his visit to our house.

My camel story makes me remember the Alexander City Sportplex buffalo that escaped the petting zoo and wandered for several days in the woods behind our house. But that is a story for another day.

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! And let’s buy a camel!

“Laughter is God’s blessing.” — Joseph Prince