The Three Christmas Camels

The Three Christmas Camels

The Arabian Desert has been Papaw’s home for over twenty centuries thus making it hard to actually know the age of the old camel everyone knows now as Papaw. Today the little grand-camels see him only as ancient because of his drooping eyes, salt and pepper colored hair, and sagging skin. Now crippling age caused Papaw’s forceful wobble to imitate the rolling motion of a ship ready to sink when he walked. At this time in his life all the old, brittle camel wanted to do was eat and sleep. Papaw was born during the reign of the great King Harrod, and he was born with two wonderful attributes. One was the gift of storytelling, the other was his fur. He had the softest, silkiest black wool coat in all of Egypt.

“Slow down, boys,” Papaw moaned. “Can’t you see I’m eating?” The little grand-camels stopped their running game around the grumpy old camel. He raised his head up out of the clump of sticklike thorny scrub only to be giggled at by the young grand-camels.

“Papaw!” yelled one grand-camel in the group, “I wish you could see yourself!” Papaw’s thick sagging skin prevented him from feeling the thorny twigs stuck under both sides of his nostrils.

“You have a pencil-shaped mustache on your face!” yelled Papaw’s oldest grand-camel. The peals of laughter from the playful gang did not stop Papaw from finishing his meal.
With his belly finally full, Papaw searched out a quiet place to close his sleepy eyes and relax in the lull of the palm trees swaying in the hot afternoon breeze. No sooner had he begun to snooze, than the worrisome group came over, aggravating him again. The annoyed old camel pushed his knees deeper into the sand to steady himself. “What can I do to get some peace and quiet from you rambunctious youngsters?” asked Papaw sleepily.

“Tell us a story!” yelled the excited little grand-camels. The old timer knew that if he wanted any rest he would have to tell them a story. Eagerly, the youngsters gathered close to Papaw. The pushing and shoving stopped when everyone found the place where they could hear the best. The sun blazed hot on the little camels’ dusty coats. They did not feel the scorching heat, though. They were only interested in Papaw and the story he was about to tell. Then the old camel nodded his head up and down and swallowed his cud. A silence fell over the anxious group.
“Let me think. It will soon be December and Christmas as you know of it in this century, so…I will tell you the story of the three Christmas camels, back when I was a young grand-camel hundreds of centuries ago,” began Papaw.

“It all began with my friend, Usher, an Arabian camel so named because of his ability to be a good leader. He weighed over one thousand, four-hundred pounds and stood seven and a half feet tall from his hump to the ground. He was cinnamon-colored with leathery cushions on his chest and knee joints. The cushions helped support his enormous weight when he knelt down. His big mouth with thirty-four sharp teeth allowed him to eat just about anything. One day,” snickered Papaw, “he was caught eating a hole in a tribesman’s tent big enough for his head to reach inside and gobble down a bowlful of most delicious chocolate-colored dates. We knew he was the one who did the deed because he had several sticky dates stuck in his chin hairs.” The youngsters burst into laughter at Papaw’s baggy-lipped snicker. “Sometimes Usher had a very bad temper. If he didn’t get his way, he would suck in his chest, gulp a breath of air, roll up his tongue, take aim, and spit…right between the eyes of whomever was unlucky enough to have annoyed him.”

Again the crowd roared with laughter. Papaw waited for the grand-camels to get quiet before he continued. Clearing his raspy throat, the old-timer resumed his story. “The most unique thing about Usher was that he could hum. He could hum the most beautiful melodies anyone had ever heard. This was Usher’s special gift. He had been born blessed with the ability to hum,” spoke Papaw looking calmly into their eyes of disbelief. “Yes,” recalled Papaw, “he would hum the most heavenly lullabies ever heard by man or beast.”

The silence was soon interrupted by one of the anxious grand-camels shouting, “I’ve never heard any camel hum!”

“That’s right,” agreed Papaw. This answer confused his spellbound audience. “You will never, ever hear a camel hum. Only Usher was given that special gift a long, long time ago,” Papaw answered back.

“Next came my friend Val, short for Valiant. His name meant ‘boldly courageous’,” spoke Papaw. Before Papaw could finish his next sentence, another of his grand-camels interrupted him.

“Why can we never, ever hear a camel hum?” The urgency in his voice demanded an immediate response to the question, but he old camel wasn’t swayed.

Papaw took a second to remember where he was before he was interrupted. “We will get to that part of the mystery soon enough,” he promised. Papaw lowered his head and blew the sand off his nose and continued the story.”

“Valiant was a lion-hearted camel who was well-known for his willingness to help anyone. He was a deep, chestnut-brown color and stood ten feet tall from his humps to the ground. He weighed two thousand, five hundred pounds. Val’s big eyes blinked constantly to keep out the desert sand and his ears were filled with so much hair they twitched like miniature radars. His extra -long tail twisted on his rump like a speeding propeller, walloping insects that insisted upon making a nuisance of themselves. Valiant was gigantic,” boasted Papaw proudly for having known him.

“We have never seen a camel that big!”