Alpaca with subtle lifestyle sneezes at King Charles October 22, 2024

Charles and the Opaca

By AFP - Agence France Presse

Alpaca with subtle lifestyle sneezes at King Charles

King Charles joked on Monday about previous encounters with Australia's formidable wildlife - brown snakes, leeches, funnel-web spiders, and bull ants. He didn't mention being sneezed on by a suit-wearing nine-year-old alpaca called Hephner.

The 75-year-old British royal visited Canberra, the capital of his Australian kingdom, where he joked with lawmakers about his time at a rural school called Timbertop.

As a gawky 17-year-old, he attended the alpine school in southeastern Australia in the 1960s and recalled the experience as life-changing.

“All I can say is that I arrived as a teenager and left as a more rounded, if not slightly chiseled character, having faced brown snakes, leeches, funnel-web spiders, and bull ants,” he said with a laugh.

He didn't tell the audience that he recently had another encounter with an Australian animal that formed his character.

Greeting supporters in a cordon at the Australian War Memorial, Charles stopped to admire a sleekly elegant alpaca wearing a golden crown and suit.

He reached out to “Hephner,” as the woolly camelid is known, and gave him a quick rub on the nose.

However, this caused Hephner to sneeze at the king and his bodyguard, who was also in the line of fire.

“Bless you, sir,” said someone in the fray before Charles checked his right lapel for any trace of Hephner's expelling tribute.

It's not the first time Charles has found an alpaca as king.

Last year, he found an alpaca (without clothes) at an agricultural show in Wales.

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