Are those your zebra in the parking lot?

Left for Mount Pleasant, Texas to pick up one baby camel and possibly one baby zebra on Tuesday night. No, not for me, for my parent's ranch. Imagine spending four days in a van with your mom and some baby animals. If that isn't a test of love, I don't know what is.

The drive there took about 25 hours, non-stop. We tried to detour through Roswell, New Mexico, thinking it'd be a fun place to stop and take a picture or two in front of a flying saucer or something. Guess what? Roswell, the mecca for intergalactic activity, didn't have anything noticable from the main road that would indicate alien presence. It was gravely disappointing.

Got to the exotic animal ranch in Texas on Thursday for our pick up. My mom wanted the baby camel and a baby zebra. The ranch had four baby zebras. Turns out you can buy a baby zebra in Texas for about $5000 each. Sounds like a lot. Unless you're from California, where they sell for $10,000 each. Entrepreneur that I am, I bought the three remaining baby zebra to bring back to California and double my money by the end of the year. So now I'm a zebra trader/truffle farmer/lawyer. Why Survivor hasn't picked me yet is beyond me.

So we stuffed the camel and four baby zebra into the back of the cargo van (sounds crowded, but there was actually room to spare) and we were off. This is what the back of the van looked like: And the camel fit right in:Texas is a huge state and by the time we got to Tucumcari, New Mexico it was 2:30 am and we were both nodding off so we stopped at a motel. We fed the kids (all on bottles) and figured they'd be down for the night in the back of the van.

At 3:00 am, right after our heads had hit the pillows, the motel phone rang. I picked up and heard a timid voice on the other end say, "Sorry to bother you ma'am, but are those your zebra in the parking lot?"

Turns out one of the zebra was a bit skittish and decided escape was in order. First she tried to get out the front window with a head butt:She apparantly realized the back window was easier and actually broke the window and jumped out the back of the van to find herself in a parking lot in Tucumcari, New Mexico - frightening for any species. By some strange twist of fate, two cowboys with an empty horse trailer just happened to be cruising that particular parking lot in the middle of that particular morning and were more excited than the zebra to help wrangle it back in. Seemed a bit suspcious to me but my mind wasn't in CSI mode at that point.

Of course, we couldn't go back in the hotel room and leave the critters in the van with an escape route so we covered the broken window and hit the road again. It was a long drive home, especially when the animals started getting carsick in Arizona. Carsick in the form of the runs and bad gas. Trust me, no amount of cedar chips in the world can cover the smell of zebra diarrhea.

We eventually made it home, and the crazed zebra has shown no signs of distress but I think that'll be the first one we sell...