I grew up in the 80s… before Nintendo, arcades, and malls; before everything, we had our public gardens… I remember them being green and I remember them being a load of fun… running around, there were playgrounds, there were mini-rides, and there were animals… The most memorable animal from my childhood was a camel from the Salmaniya Garden…
As the afternoon weather got more pleasant, you’d make your way to the Garden and spend a couple of hours playing, running around until the Camel would arrive… As soon as you’d see the Camel plodding along with its trainer, you’d run off to buy a glass bottle of Soda Pop (Pepsi, Miranda, 7Up, whatever was available)… I know you’re going to think I’m insane for doing this, but I’d run up to the camel, and he’d bend his head down as if saying something and with his puckered lips take the bottle of soda. The Camel would then raise his head up, chug that bottle of soda, and finish off the performance by spitting that bottle as far as his camel lips could spit… this was such a cool thing to see, I mean the glass bottle projectile would fly out of this mouth and if you were in the way, you really needed to dodge, and fast… I wasn’t the only kid who thought a cola guzzling camel was a cool thing, kids lined up and bought bottle after bottle…
It didn’t take long before the camel keeled over and died… I’m sure all those fizzy drinks had something to do with it all… looking back, I remember Miranda (orange soda) had a marketing campaign with a puppet camel that drank the sodas and gave a thumbs up for Miranda… So maybe subconsciously we (kids) thought it was ok to feed the camel drinks… who knows… does anyone ever remember the poor camel’s name?
I miss that camel...
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4 comments:
you are a sick puppy BR!
Of course the bloody camel would keel over and die, I'm surprised it has taken so long for the beast to do so. But that's a sly trick you're trying as well... shifting the blame to a big corporation in the hope that you would collect enough silly hearts to mount a class action law suite against Pepsi Co. (hrm.. can I join?)
We never understood the concept of "DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS" it just never registered... Looking back, I'm not too proud of inducing sugar highs into Donkeys and Horses with all those sugar cubes we fed them...
Wait a minute the camel would die in front of you everytime you did this?
I just recently found out that the camel died a couple of years ago... No autopsy was done, so we don't know what the coroner discovered... I'm assumming all that soda could have led to the camel's death..
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