by Paul Shindman

Every now and then you start reading a news story     and some 25 watt bulb goes on in the back of your  mind. By the time you’re a few graphs down, it hit’s 40 watts and that subconcious thought bubbles to the surface of my brain.

Such it was with the tragic story of two Israelis who died in a single car crash earlier this year in the Negev desert. In the dark of night they collided with a camel that had wandered onto the highway.

 A Canuck who hears this news concludes that camels are therefore like moose. You hit one with your car on a the road at night and you’re dead. Like moose, camels are big, and their legs hold up the “ship-of-the-desert” with their large volume capacity for water.

When your car hits a moose or camel, the front end takes out the legs. And where does that leave the rest of the beast? Aimed right for the windshied. Yikes!

A camel is heavy like a moose. Very heavy. For a big bull moose that can be over 700 kg. Much worse than a deer, which is lighter but just as deadly. And deer from the great white north have a cousin in the Holy Land who sadly fulfills a smiliar role – the lowly donkey. Heavy torso that sits atop thin, spindly legs. Donkeys are around lots of the roads in Israel. Get out your tape measure and yikes, just like a deer, that donkey torso sits just above bumper height. Ask anybody who’s hit a deer and when that torso comes slamming right at your windshield you really do wish you’d hit a skunk instead. However, no skunks in Israel.

It could be that a car-donkey crash two months ago in the Galilee hills I read about after the car-camel mishap switched on the light bulb for me. On a few occasions I’ve come close to hitting a deer in North America, and every year one reads about the poor souls injured or killed on the Trans-Canada or some other road. Scary stuff, and I never thought I’d relate it to life here in the Middle East.

So yea, sometimes a moose in Canada certainly is like a camel in the Holy Land. How to avoid the fatal attraction? Drive defensively at night in the desert too and slow down a touch, just like they advise you in Canda. Also, a young Israeli boy has tried to come up with a solution.

And a Canuck in the Holy Land also can’t miss the similarity of circumstance. Just like if you drink too much Moosehead beer your odds of bumping into a moose soar, if you imbibe a local brew called ‘Dancing Camel’ and then head south through the desert… well, it’s a crazy way for a similar fatal attraction with a camel.

Related posts:

1. Holy Land Cuisine a Healthy Hit in Toronto