Grave of the Confederate Camel
Vicksburg, Mississippi
The Confederate Army had some unusual brainstorms during the Civil War, one of which was to use camels as pack animals. The experiment was a flop -- the camels scared horses -- but one dromedary was apparently personable enough to persevere: "Old Douglas." He was an aging veteran of The Camel Corps, a herd of dromedaries imported in the 1850s by future Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who thought that camels could help settle the desert Southwest for slaveholders (like himself).
Old Douglas was "a favorite of both beasts and men," according to the lengthy inscription on his tombstone, but was "intentionally killed by Yankee sharpshooters" during the siege of Vicksburg on June 27, 1863. The camel had wandered into No Man's Land in search of food, and became a too-tempting target. "He may have been eaten by starving Confederates," the tombstone states, and indeed this seems to have been true.
The bones of Old Douglas were later made into souvenirs and scattered, but he was nevertheless given a grave plot in Vicksburg City Cemetery, where his tombstone stands out among those of the roughly 5,000 human Confederates who died during the siege.