Keeping Watch

Yesterday we discovered that HiHo had a few scratches on his chest and forelegs. We haltered him and cleaned them off. They were superficial luckily. How it happened we don't know. They have a big pasture with bushes, trees, rocks and logs. Keeping watch over the camels' safety is a daily, constant, responsibility. Every night before going to bed I go out into the pasture, either by moonlight or with a flash-light, usually around midnight, to find each camel and check them over for anything unusual.

They have a few favourite groves of brush oak they like to camp in, but lately I find them, each night, clustered together at the fence dividing the upper and lower pastures. Both groups come together there to sleep the night as a herd, finding comfort in greater numbers. Everest and Muffin are often close, with the fence between them. Jelly and Peaceful usually seem to be co-joined at the hip, looking like a two-headed dragon sometimes. Google Mama is often seated about 20 feet from the group. HiHo and Delaney tend to pod together. And Purni takes her bed somewhere near either Google or Everest.

Visiting them in their camp is always a treat. Their big, warm, woolly, bodies set down in scattered, quiet, repose, wide eyes firmly on me through the darkness. I don't presume to intrude on them beyond a brief head count and then I'm away with a "goodnight, monkeys".... and I'm off to my own non-camel bed.