CAMELS ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF THE CITY

I drove to the city today. It was about 10 AM when I bought seven 2kg packs of dry cat food and finished photographing the pet shop's interior for the post that will be probably published next Friday in the Market Friday community. On the way back home, while driving along the bypass road on the edge of Pula ...

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... I came across the biggest surprise of this year, so far.
A group of camels was slowly chewing the hay on the large lawn by the side of the road. I haven't seen a real, living camel, since - I don't know, early eighties, probably - when I visited the Zoo in Zagreb, the capital of this country I'm living in. In this opening photograph, you can see the unusual combination of a bunch of camels and suburban homes in the background.

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Five or six meters from the big adult camels around the hay rack feeder, there was this much smaller youngster.

The letter above the camel form what looks like a name. At this point, one may think that the young camel shown in this shot isn't just any of the many anonymous camels of the world. This is a male and his name is Andy. But ...

... the reality served through photography can easily be manipulated. A bit of zooming out - and the camel becomes a female called Candy. The name is shown in its entirety this time, but ...

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... it encompasses more than just one camel. Candy is the circus in which all the camels shown in today's post live and work.

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A group of people also lives, works, and tends the animals in this circus, but I saw only their cars, trucks & trailers today.

Two bovines were sharing the fenced space with the camels. One of them can be seen by the hay rack in this shot. The other one ...

... was sniffing along the fence. I never saw this kind of cow before. After a quick Internet search, I found out that the name of the breed is Watusi.

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The animals were the most interesting part for me but trucks were also pretty cool.

Some of them were decorated with colorful paintings.

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From the animals shown in this picture, only the horses are part of the show. The elephants ...

... aren't part of the circus anymore. If you enlarge the following photograph by clicking on it ...

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... and if you can read Croatian, you'll see that one can buy the tickets from 9 to 11 AM or half an hour before the beginning of the show.

This morning in the city, judging by the registration plates on the trucks, I came to the conclusion that the circus is from Germany, but I wasn't completely sure about that.

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Later (I mean, a couple of minutes ago) at home, I found out on the Internet that the circus Candy is indeed a German circus.

A short article states that: "Circus Candy is owned by the Spindler family, which has been involved in the circus for the seventh generation, and they admit that running a circus is not easy."

If I understood the article correctly, the family that runs the circus is from Germany but in the last twenty years, they are active mainly in Austria.

This looks like the main tent where the show is going on in the evening.

This camel was resting in the shade provided by a series of four smaller tents.

While passing by the truck shown in this photograph ...

... I was surprised by a tiger.

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It was just a painted tiger, but a scary one nonetheless.

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You can see another camel in this shot. This one found something edible on the floor near the fence ...

... while the others were enjoying the hay in the center of the corral.

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In this wide shot, you can see more of the scenery, the bypass road, and the supermarkets on the other side. In the following photograph ...

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... the focus is on the big lion painted on one of the trucks.

This is the black & white version of the scene shown earlier in the post in color. I created this monochrome edit because the painting reminded me of some old circus-themed movies I saw as a kid on TV.

Here you can take another look at the wider scenery, from a different angle this time.

This is the last of the many shots with the animals around the hay rack I took today.

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At this point, the end of the post is very near.

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Here you can take one last look at the top of the large tent ...

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... and the circus flags waving on the warm, gentle summer breeze.

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