A fondness for weapons has lasted most of my life. After the war, I no longer cared to actually shoot anything, except perhaps my cat if he doesn't knock off ordering Domino's without me knowing.

Anyway, I digress. I thought I had told this story, but may have done so while talking with someone on the phone, so...

1963 and we had discovered that a shop, Green Flag or Baloki's in Al-Khobar had started carrying "Diana" pellet rifles. These were the type that you had to pull down the barrel to cock it, insert the pellet and then hunt street lights.

As is usual, a couple of good buddies, Peter Pestoni, and Tom Painter and I decided to go to Imhoff for two good reasons. One, the hobby farm and we knew Heidi Knott would be out riding, such a beauty, both horse and Heidi. Two, no one knew we had these weapons of mass destruction.

Now being great white hunters and stalking lizards and scorpions was just fine with me, but Peter decided to hunt a Camel. This seemed fine to us, but after finding two of them just moseying around, we found that our huge cannons were just bouncing off the thick hide of the beasts and that they weren't even aware of our Herculean efforts. This just pissed off Peter, but Tom and I had given up. The sand was really soft and Peter goes out to the Camel, and using some form of logic, picks out the big one to hunt. Once again he just wastes his time and is getting madder because he is down to a few pellets and we won't share. So while we are sitting about 200 feet from all this, that fool goes around behind the Camel, Lifts it's tail and shoots it in a tender area.

The look on that camels face wasn't one of delight, but not of pain, more like " NOW, I'm really pissed off". It turns and sees Peter and he sees it. The pellet had no effect except that now it's a mad camel and Peter is running like a madman in the soft sand going nowhere. The effect on us was catastrophic as we couldn't move from laughter and then the Camel caught him and did it's best to make him aŹ part of the desert.

I'm not sure how we got him free of the mess he was in, but he was black and blue and I believe we had to go to the hospital because he had been bitten. Told the Doctor that a stray Camel, had for no good reason, attacked him.

I went home and without thinking was telling my Mom, who immediately told me that Dad would die if he knew I had such a weapon. I told her that it couldn't hurt anyone and about the Camel. She didn't believe me, so without further ado, she was about forty feet from me, I shot her in the leg to show how they just bounced off..

Her look had a strong resemblance to the look on that camel's face. She looked down and there was a trickle of blood on her calf. Off we went to the hospital and the Doctor dug out the pellet, which was in about a half inch... She broke my pellet gun, and I won't say on what, and told me that if I ever, for the next 100 years did anything wrong, she would tell Dad... I was fully aware of what that meant.

So ended the Great Hunt..

Michael Crocker(DH 65)
Nacogdoches, Texas

" A strong offense is the best defense."

Date: Mon, 03 Jun 1996 10:01:40 -0500