March Of The Burn-Victim Towel Animals!

TowelelephantOne night on the cruise this year I came back from dinner and found this little creature sitting on my nightstand.

At first I was charmed (at the obvious cuteness of the object).

Then I was impressed (at my cabin attendant’s obvious skill in fashioning an elephant out of towels).

Then I was confused (at why he’d take the time to do this).

Then I was mildly disturbed (at the fact that those are MY sunglasses and to retrieve them my cabin attendant had to venture a little farther into one of my unzipped tote bags than I was comfortable with).

Then I realized the potential for a blog post and whipped out my camera.

Little did I know that this was only the first whimsical towel creature that would visit my cabin over succeeding nights.

The next night I was visited by a towel bunny.

Towelbunny

Then came a towel dog.

Toweldog_2

Then came a towel . . . well, I’m not sure WHAT this is. (Can you guess?) It looks a lot like an elephant to me, but I already had one of those, and this one has a stunted trunk–if it’s meant to be a trunk at all.

Towelcreature

And lastly I found a towel aardvark on my bed.

Towelaardvark

Now, I’ve been on all four Catholic Answers cruises so far, and this was the first time anything like this had happened.

It wasn’t just that I had an eccentric cabin attendant with a talent for towel origami, though. This was happening to EVERYONE ON THE SHIP.

In fact, people were getting the same animals on the same nights–mostly.

Some folks referred to getting a towel turtle at one point, and I never got one of those. Also, on the last night of the cruise (when I didn’t get an animal–or didn’t see one at any rate) people reported finidng a towel monkey hanging from a clothes hangar.

Still, it was impressive stuff and a nice lagniappe for the guests.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

30 thoughts on “March Of The Burn-Victim Towel Animals!”

  1. Yeah, a lot of cruises do that. One time I got a “towelligator” (ha ha) with pieces of candy for eyes.

  2. “Then came a towel . . . well, I’m not sure WHAT this is. (Can you guess?)”
    A Towel Poodle? :-p

  3. How cute!
    I was going to say an aardvark for the mystery animal and then I saw the aardvark — maybe it’s an African Elephant and an Indian Elephant — you know one has longer ears than the other, but I forget which.

  4. an African Elephant and an Indian Elephant — you know one has longer ears than the other, but I forget which
    The African elephant has bigger ears, resembling the land mass from which the elephant comes 🙂

  5. “Where does the “burn-victim” come into it?”
    I think Jimmy is referring to the resemblance it has to a bandaged face (thanks to the sunglasses).
    Ya know, like Claude Rains in “The Invisible Man”?

  6. Saturday afternoon (just after the final breakout session) there was a presentation on towel origami in the Centrum area on deck four. I took the kids and now there aren’t any towels left in the linen closet at home – but we have lots of new pets!

  7. Hey, I just noticed the box of “Heavenly” tissues next to the elephant.
    Jimmy, was this arranged just for the CA cruise?
    And are they really heavenly tissues?

  8. It could have been worse, Jimmy. They could have left some Chick Tracts for you. Then you really would have wanted to throw in the towel!

  9. Apparently this is common. My sister went on a cruise years ago, and every evening she and the other women would return to their cabins to find that the (male) steward had gone either into their luggage, closet, or dresser, retrieved one of their long flowing night gowns, and arranged it on the bed.

  10. On our honeymoon cruise we also found towel animals every day. Our monkey was hanging from the ceiling.

  11. I think the second picture was a calling card…
    Clearly it was the Easter Bunny toying with you…

  12. Re: laying out your nightgown
    *nose up in air*
    My dear lady, don’t you know that’s what servants are for?
    *nose down*
    It does sorta make you realize how potentially demeaning it is to have servants, and how much privacy you give up when you have them. I mean, geez, even my mother lets me lay out my own pajamas. I suppose the passenger could put it out on the bed before he did, as a sort of preemptive strike.
    OTOH, if you’re having someone traipsing through your cabin every day, I guess you’ve given up a lot of privacy already.

  13. In his autobiography Treasure in Clay Abp. Fulton Sheen recounts a funny travel story. In those days priests wore far fancier vestments than they do today. When Abp. Sheen got back to his room after a long day, he found that the hotel maid had thoughtfully laid out his pajamas on one side of his double bed. On the other side was laid out the frilly, white, lawn vestment (can’t remember the name) that the maid took to be a lady’s nightgown.

  14. I’m kind of alarmed at the thought of people going through personal stuff like that. Would they do it if bags were all zipped up, too? How is that acceptable? I’ve never heard of such a thing. I’m just shocked because I’ve never heard of this being a thing to expect. I thought they cleaned what was theirs, and that moving your stuff around was okay, if it was in their way (like when making the bed, when you left some clothes or bags on it). But not going through dresser drawers, closets and bags.

  15. “Then came a towel . . . well, I’m not sure WHAT this is. (Can you guess?)”
    sea urchin? anemone?
    …sponge?

  16. The head is definatly a sheep’s or a goat’s. The ears seem to big though.

  17. Those are pretty decent towel animals. As a former housekeeper, those animals are a mild “hint” to leave your attendant a tip. They work very hard for their money.

  18. You don’t need to go through personal items to make towel origami. It’s just not right. The best way to learn the proper way to fold towel origami is from DVDs, not hard to follow books. Check out
    http://www.FoldingMagic.com
    to see DVDs on towel origami.

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