Camel

CAMEL. Everything about a camel is as queer as if you had dreamed him in a nightmare. His neck and legs look too long and sprawling for his body. His feet are each split into two hoofed toes almost up to the ankle.

His head is small and ugly and, as Kipling says, bobs around "like a basketful of snakes." His brown eyes fairly pop out of his head like agate marbles, from sockets too small for them.

His nostrils are bias slits.

He can open them wide, or close them almost shut during the terrible sand storms of his native deserts. His rough hair looks as if it never had been combed. On his knobby knees and arched breast-bone he wears tough leathery pads like a f ootball player. Finally, his hump makes him look as if he " had his back up" against an unfriendly world.

Don't go too near a camel's head. Sometimes, for no cause at all, he has a terrible fit of rage. Then he tries to bite and to kick the person nearest. One of the first things you will notice is the queer way in which he chews his food. His lower jaw swings from side to side like a hammock. His upper lip is cleft up the middle like a hare-lip. The camel reaches for and feels its food with this thick split lip as if it were made up of two fingers.

And His Disposition is Just as Odd! For many hundreds of years the camel has been one of the most useful animals to men, because of his great strength and his ability to endure heat, thirst, and hunger. But he is a very stupid beast and has never learned to do more than a few simple things. He never seems to know or to care for his driver, who may have brought him up from a baby.

He has as little sense as a sheep, is as ill-tempered as an angry bull, and as stubborn as a mule. He works, but not willingly as a horse does.

One of the few things the camel has learned to do is to kneel when he is ordered to do so. His kneepads protect his joints from the hard ground, but he moans and groans as if in terrible pain.

He knows some kind of a load is to be put on, and com plains aloud. He doesn't wait to find out whether the load is to be heavy or light.

He carries with ease a quarter of a ton of goods for hundreds of miles across wide deserts. But he groa .s just as loud when he is asked to carry two Etta children about the zoo. With more groans he heaves his big body up and starts to walk, or rather to rock.

Why the "Ship of the Desert" Makes You Seasick If you get seasick easily you had better not try tc ride a camel. He lifts both feet on one side at th same time, tilting his body sideways. Then he li is the two feet on the other side. So you must roll c ar and back. Tossing and pitching, heaving and rolling, you feel as though you were in a sailboat on rough water. So violent is the motion that the camel-police of Egypt, who often ride day and night over the desert on racing camels in pursuit of smugglers, are compelled to bind their bodies tightly with long strips of cloth. An American writer described camel-riding in these words: "Set a section of twelve-rail fence at an angle of 45 degrees in a farm wagon, straddle this and have the whole outfit, your self included, run away with over a rocky New Eng land blueberry pasture, and you will form a mild conception of the sensation of riding a baggage camel in the Sahara." Maybe you think this is why the camel is called the "ship of the desert." But it isn't. It is because he carries people and merchandise across wide seas of shifting sand.

Haven't you heard people say, "Handsome is as handsome does"? If you could see the camel at home where he "does handsomely" you would forget what an ugly ungainly beast he is. You would think how wonderfully he is made for the work he has to do. No other animal can live and carry great burdens in such a climate, on such scant supplies of food and water.

The Camel's Dainty Appetite For food, after a day's travel, a camel is given a small measure of hard dates or dry beans. Besides, he crops the twigs, thistles, and thorny shrubs that grow here and there in the desert. Camels will eat anything. They will chew their own leather bridles or tent cloth, and they consider an old mat or basket a great delicacy. One witty writer has said that a camel can make a breakfast from a Sunday newspaper and an old umbrella. And their digestion is so good that even poison affects them very little. Moreover, the camel's big solid hump is his pantry shelf full of fat, to be drawn upon when food is scarce, and his stomach is a honey-comb of little cells for storing water, so that he can go a week between drinks in case of need.