medium: colored pencil

size: 7" x 7"

Why, you might ask, have you drawn a bronze camel? And why does it say souvenir of Boise?

Well, kind visitor, of those questions, I can only answer the first. My great-great-grandmother, it seems, collected camel figurines from around the world. Whenever people would go on trips, she would ask them to bring her back a camel. My great-grandfather -- who lives in Boise, is in his nineties, and claims to be preparing to die despite the fact that he still rides a motorcycle -- gave them to my mother, and my mother is storing them at my house for the present. This camel is perhaps my favorite of those figurines, in part because it says "souvenir of Boise" and in part because I love the screw that goes right into his neck. It's smaller than it looks in the drawing; it's somewhere around two inches long.

As for why it says "souvenir of Boise," my family can only conjecture. There seems to be a park in Boise named Camel's Back Park, and that's the best guess we have so far. If you know the answer, or even have a guess, I'd love to hear it.

Incidentally, I listened to Albert Camus's The Stranger while I drew this picture. I may also have been listening to Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange.