LiveJournal: the magic lives on

[stillsostrange]

I just started a long rambly post about the perils of party separation and travel times, and after I'd typed two paragraphs I realized how I can avoid it. So carry on.

But while I'm here, has anyone smelled a camel recently? I'd imagine they're pungent and wooly, but specifics would be appreciated. The Austin zoo doesn't appear to have any, or I could go be a crazy person and ask to smell their animals.

Comments

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Spent a week handling camels a few years ago. They tend to smell like camel-dung. After three days, we all smelled like camel-dung...

It doesn't have as 'wet' a smell as cow dung, or as 'brown'. Not as ripe. It smells dry and....efficient? Not like horse dung either.

Didn't have much of an issue with with saddle soreness, but I actually did a lot of walking. (The camels were really there to haul the water, so we all walked at least half the day.)

[mouseferatu.livejournal.com]

But while I'm here, has anyone smelled a camel recently?

This may be the single best out-of-context quote I've seen so far this year. =8-D

If you can afford a weekend trip, the Houston zoo is about 873 times better than the Austin one. I'm not sure they do camel-smelling sessions, but you should at least be able to get close enough to get an idea.

And somehow, I'd either forgotten or never knew you lived in Austin. I have a group of local writers that occasionally gets together for dinner and chatting. Would you be interested in being added to the Google group, to get the invites?

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Would you be interested in being added to the Google group

Belatedly, sure!

[michaeldthomas.livejournal.com]

It's been awhile, but I seem to remember a pungent musky smell. IIRC, it's like a cross between a goat and a horse smell.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

That was my experience as well. Odd that I can remember the smell, but not exactly where I smelled them except that it was at a zoo...

[ammitnox.livejournal.com]

I only remember them being WAY taller than I expected.

[cate-morgan.livejournal.com]

I'm with michaeldthomas. I also recall it as being very . . . pervasive? A sandy sour sort of pungency that kind of permeates everything around it.

I rode a camel at the Albequerque Zoo when I was ten, which was WAY different from riding a horse. There's a sort of exaggerated, jerky, drunken swaying from side to side, front to back, that makes you feel like you're going to slide right off. But that was the experience of an undersized ten-year-old, so that probably won't help you.

Do zoos even give camel rides anymore?

[miladygrey.livejournal.com]

They smell like...well, as mingled with the elephant-smell and general zoo-smells of my memory, they smell like mulch. Like that particular mix of fertilizer and crap that my mom would buy by the truckload every spring to make sure her flowers bloomed.

In short, camels smell like musky poop, and like springtime. Two smells that...really shouldn't go together.