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From: ktw@whuxi.UUCP (WOLMAN)
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Subject: Shaggy (Pained) Camel Story (Not for the Squeamish!)
Message-ID: <217@whuxi.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 21-Dec-84 09:21:57 EST
Article-I.D.: whuxi.217
Posted: Fri Dec 21 09:21:57 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 22-Dec-84 02:08:11 EST
Organization: Bell Labs, Whippany, N.J.
Lines: 33

During the heyday of Life magazine, a photographer hears about an
extremely--and uncharacteristically--docile breed of camels 
indigenous to a particular sheikhdom in the Middle East.  He
"sells" his editor on the news value of the story, grabs a few
cameras and a typewriter, and gets on the first plane to the
sheikhdom.  He goes to the Sheikh himself and explains why he's 
traveled across the world, and asks about the camels.

"It's no big secret why they're docile," says the Sheikh.  "As
soon as the male camels have fathered a child, we castrate them.
It's quite a ceremony.  You wanna watch?"  The photographer of
course assents.

That night, all the men assemble around a huge fire.  Standing
by a brazier in the middle of the circle is a huge man, stripped
to the waist and wearing a black mask.  A male camel is led out,
trussed by five strong men, and held down.  The man in the mask
takes two pairs of tongs, seizes two red-hot bricks, and smashes
them against the camel's testicles.  The camel shrieks; the men
untie it and it runs back to the pen.

For the first time in a career in which he's photographed
murders, executions, and wars, the photographer is sick to his
stomach.  When he recovers he approaches the Sheikh and blurts
out, "Doesn't that HURT????"

"I guess so," says the Sheikh, "but only if you get your thumb
caught between the bricks."


Ken Wolman
Bellcore @ Livingston Asylum for the Mad
whuxi!ktw