Runaway camel stops traffic in Sweden

A camel on the run stopped traffic on a road in the middle of a snowstorm in southern Sweden.

Several motorists called the police but it was some time before sceptical officers finally believed them and went to the scene.

“We were somewhat doubtful at first,” police spokesman Sten-Ove Fransson in Skoevde, 260 kilometres south of Stockholm.

“But then more people called, so we were finally convinced that there really was a camel gone astray on the road – or else there had been a big party.”

However, before police had gone to the scene on Friday, friends of the camel’s owner arrived and led it back to a stable, where it is temporarily kept while awaiting a home in a new barn.

Owner Anneli Arvidsson said in a telephone interview that the 22-year-old camel’s closest companion was a horse, a 10-year-old gelding.

“But on Friday, the horse had been taken inside the stable and the camel was left alone in the pasture, which probably made him feel lonely,” she said.

Arvidsson bought the Siberian camel named Emat from a zoo when it was one year old.