14 DAY TRIAL // Whenever the family of four gets together for their meals, Joe, the six-year-old camel, appears and serves himself with everything except cheese. While the first few times the animal took the family by surprise, now he is expected at mealtimes like a usual family member.
The Anderson-Dixon family formed by Nathan and Charlotte and their two children Reuben, 3, and Beau, 2, have73 animals in their care at the family farm from Stow, Staffordshire. The animal farm includes three female camels, reindeers, tortoises and giant snails.
From all these animals, a 5 ft 8in (1.76 meters) Bactrian camel turns out to be the Anderson-Dixon's favorite. Joe comes to dinner, lunch or breakfast and indulges himself with vegetables, fruits or cereals from the table making a big mess after. But even if at the beginning the family was confused by the camel's behavior, they now accept it and expect him when it's meal time.
“The first time Joe joined us for breakfast he was uninvited, he leaned in and rudely helped himself to the fruit bowl. But I wasn't surprised because he's very good at persuading all the other animals to give him their food too,” Nathan told Metro News.
Joe is part of the family and “he's like a big soft giant teddy bear” making it almost impossible for anyone to refuse him anything.
The inhabitants from the Anderson-Dixon farm are part of The Animal company, a firm that hire animals for different events, commercials, shows or movie productions. The family has a lot of stars on their hands and Joe seems to be the biggest one.
There are other families who decided that having a dog or a cat as a pet is not enough. Annel Snyman from Loebies Animal Farm in South Africa considers her lions, leopards, caracals and other wild animals as part of her family. One of her lions acts like a usual house cat wandering around the living room, growling and hopping on the kitchen table when she wants to be fed.