“The camel is home.”
My wife made the announcement, nonchalantly, while I was finishing my morning tea. I almost looked around the living room to see what I’d missed while asleep. Then I remembered that some friends in our town are adopting a camel. So I casually asked if he’d had a good trip, as if it’s typical to talk about camels in our house over morning tea.
It’s not. I cannot recall ever talking about camels over tea, breakfast, or any other meal or beverage.
Constantine. That’s what I’ve decided to call him, not because it is his name but instead because I like the sound of it. Constantine. The camel. He’s a two-humped Bactrian. He is now a member of our community.
In our county, domesticated ungulates are common. There are plenty of horses, cattle, and even some deer. I’ve seen a pig or two. And there is a fair share of llamas; Constantine’s new family owns some, as do others in this neck of the global woods. I’ve had occasion over the years to help some neighbors corral a few llamas back into their fenced enclosure after the deft escape artists found a path to the local road and transient freedom.
Non-domesticated ungulates are also frequent visitors, a result of the lack of water in the mountains and perhaps overpopulation. Just last week I had to stop my car suddenly, in my own driveway, to let a few large elk pass. And last year, during an early evening run, I had to duck and cover when a gang of them came hurdling over a fence just when I was approaching it. I’ve never passed that fence again without looking both ways.
Despite such ungulate familiarity, a camel is not a usual sight in these parts, day or night. I’ve never had to chase one off my property, never waited for one to cross the road, and never fretted that one was going to jump in front of or atop of me while I was running or driving. So Constantine is paving new ground, even if he may be doing so behind a sturdy fence, somewhere I hope he stays. Although they are fast runners, camels, fortunately, are not good jumpers.
Not since the Camelops, a camel genus that went extinct in the Pleistocene era, have camels roamed western North America. That was about 10,000 years ago. Constantine is not fazed by this fact. Asked to move west, he did just that. My wife tells me that he is six months old, is the size of a large llama, and was able to travel safely across the country via a horse trailer. Based on what she’s also told me about the average size of a full grown camel, I suspect he’ll need a much bigger trailer for travel in a few years time. But he’s probably not much troubled by this potential problem either. Camels, it seems, are animals of the present tense.
Constantine’s arrival in a camel-free U.S. county might stimulate a few questions. “Why a camel?” is an example. That thought certainly topped my list. What the heck does anyone around here need with a camel? Wouldn’t the poor fellow be happier in some dune-drenched desert?
However, after chewing on the matter for a day, I’ve decided that such a line of inquiry – or anything similar to it – is neither fair nor open-minded. It’s also beside the point. Constantine needed a home. He was probably stuck in an ungulate-impoverished locale that didn’t know what to do with him. Our county happens to have some fellow even-toed ungulates – llamas – who officially belong to the “camelid” family. Since I bet no one offered Constantine passage from the U.S. eastern seaboard to Mongolia, where the last of his Bactrian brethren live an endangered existence in the wild, a move west to our county seems like a good solution.
It is healthy to have one’s frame of reference challenged, at least occasionally. What should I care what circumstances have conspired to bring Constantine into my world? He is here. He isn’t causing any problems. And he will no doubt be exploring ways to co-exist – with any luck, amicably – with the other four and two-legged inhabitants of our town. There may be some lessons there for us all.
So welcome Constantine! If you can avoid stepping on me or my car when I’m moving through my day, we should be able to find a way to become friends.
Be careful Constantine may be the son of ” The Red Ghost”!
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/whatever-happened-wild-camels-american-west-180956176/
An update on Camels in the Flagstaff area…..not a novelty!! The historic Beale Wagon Road crossed Northern Arizona in the 1860s or so….and they used imported CAMELS from Syria, plus an imported camel handler, to carry equipment in creating the road for settlers (apparently some 1000 miles long). Apparently, when they were done building the road, the camels were released to live the rest of their lives in the wild (they live up to 60 years). Don’t know what happened to the camel handler 🙂
So there you go…Eric is reenacting history….