Forget fortune-tellers or Vegas odds-makers. Princess the Camel has predicted the winner of this year’s Super Bowl — and it’s the New York Giants.
Princess, who resides at Popcorn Park Zoo in Lacey Township, has correctly picked winners in five of the last six Super Bowls.
How does she do it?
Princess the Prognosticator
John Bergmann, the zoo’s general manager, writes the name of one team on one of his palms, and the rival team on his other palm. Then, he covers each palm with a Graham cracker — and sees which hand she goes to first. This year, she went, without hesitation, to the cracker covering “The Giants,” predicting bad news for the New England Patriots.
I know first-hand (no pun intended) how much Princess loves Graham crackers. A few years ago, while visiting the zoo with a friend who kept his lions there (long story), Bergmann invited me to feed Princess a Graham cracker. I said yes before learning I was supposed to put one end of the cracker in my mouth and let Princess grab the other end. (Somewhere, I even have pictures of this.) It’s a little scary to see a camel’s massive head coming straight for your face, but she was ever so gentle in taking her treat. Feeding Princess was the closest I’ve ever come to a brush with royalty.
This furry lady actually has quite a distinguished pedigree. She was a pet of the late billionaire heiress Doris Duke, and the first time I saw Princess and her (late) sister Babe — from afar — was on a tour of the Duke Farms estate in Hillsborough, where Princess and Babe mostly stayed. (In the summers, though, they traveled with Duke to Rough Point, her “cottage” in Newport.)
After Duke died in 1993, the camels stayed on in Hillsborough. Several years later, Babe died, leaving Princess alone. When her caretaker was about to retire, Princess moved to PopcornPark, where most of the animals were taken in because they’d been abandoned and/or abused.
Princess was neither, but she was — and is — a welcome addition to the zoo. And she’s one heck of a prognosticator.