Camel Love

Last week, among all the other adventures, I visited a renowned psychic, Lynn Gardner, who offers "intuitive counseling for Life Changes and Situation Solving." I'll comment on that visit later. I enjoyed Lynn very much, and you can learn something about her at www.LynnGardner.com .

One of the fun things about her gorgeous old ranch house in the Tucson foothills is the resident camels.

Few people know that camels have a long history in this area ( http://www.desertusa.com/mag05/sep/camel.html ), but these particular critters have a slightly more exciting history!

It seems that, once upon a time, a certain Sheik in Arabia, aka rich oil baron sultan, decided to send his number one son to the United States, and specifically the University of Arizona, for his education. Unanticipated by said sultan, in his son’s senior year, said son fell in love with an American gal. Papa was not happy, but discretion being the better part of valor, he decided to play it cool. The marriage was planned and Papa sent a very special wedding gift to his number one son and his American love – three of his prized racing camels.

The camels were transported on Papa’s private jet from Saudi Arabia to Tucson, non-stop, refueled in the air, where, upon arrival, Papa had to pay over $10,000 to have camel doo-doo removed from the interior of his wonderful aircraft.

The camels were delivered to the newlyweds with one condition. Tucson is not the ideal climate for camels (too cool in the winter apparently), so Papa demanded that the camels, along with the newlyweds, move to Yuma. Not wanting to be cut off from financial assistance, number one son said 'of course we’ll go." American wife said "no way in hell."

90 days later, the divorce was final and the now ex-wife received the three prize racing camels in her divorce settlement. . . the last thing in the world that she wanted.

Wifey decided to sell the poor camels, after exhausting all other possible ways to get rid of them. Enter our lovely and charming psychic here in Tucson to rescue them before anything more dramatic could happen.

They are now happy camels having the run of her estate, meeting and greeting all visitors, like me, and they seem quite content with the Tucson winters.