Animals go off-script in living nativities

NEW YORK, Dec. 18 (UPI) -- Churches across the United States have found that using live animals and people for nativity scenes can result in action not in the script.

There was the donkey that bolted with the Virgin Mary on its back at Fellowship Baptist Church in Mount Laurel, N.J., two years ago. Joseph, trying to halt the wayward donkey, was dragged several hundred feet.

Pastor Andy Wallin told The Wall Street Journal that Mary and Joseph no longer travel by donkey. The church's living nativity still uses sheep although Wallin, on another occasion, hopped aboard a runaway sheep, trying to stop it.

At First United Methodist Church in Tuckerton, N.J., the stable roof was thatched with evergreen branches -- until a camel ate it. A cow that wandered from a living nativity at First Baptist in Fort Walton, Fla., was rounded by by police after a 90-minute stroll through downtown.

Living nativities are increasingly popular, the Journal said, even though camel rental can cost $3,000 per beast. Permits may also be needed to bring in livestock.

First Baptist in Salinas, Calif., even got a permit for a leopard, on display in King Herod's court.