CAMEL HELPS CONGREGATION GET BACK AT PRACTICAL-JOKING PREACHER.

Byline: Associated Press 

It was payback time for the prankster preacher.

During his 30 years at Whitesburg Baptist Church, the Rev. Dick Thomassian has been jumping out from behind doors and calling church members using disguised voices.

Revenge came on a recent Sunday in the form of Joe, a one-humped Arabian camel.

Thomassian, the church's associate pastor for missions, loves camels about as much as he does his schoolboy jokes. He has a 300-camel collection in his office.

So the Rev. Jimmy Jackson, the church pastor, quietly devised the plan to present Thomassian with a live camel on the night of his 30th anniversary of service. A handful of congregational conspirators located the 6-foot-tall camel in Cullman that they could rent for a night.

Before they brought out the camel, they tried to disarm any suspicions of a practical joke in the works by giving Thomassian a large rocking-horse camel.

But then, in front of a crowd of 1,500, two youth interns, a church member and a camel handler marched into the Whitesburg chapel wearing mock-Arabian garb and rolling out a white-paper runway.

Following closely behind was shaggy, unkempt, 1-year-old Joe.