Lexington remembers Abraham, county councilman’s Mountain Dew-drinking camel
For nearly three decades, a 7-foot-tall camel owned by a Lexington County councilman and the county coroner brought joy and the message of Jesus across Lexington.
A Christian minister who never spoke a word. An avid Mountain Dew drinker. The A-list actor in an annual Christmas play. Arguably, the most famous mammal in Lexington. Abraham — the camel that Councilman Clifford Fisher and Margaret, the county coroner and Clifford’s wife, adopted at just a few months old — died in the early morning hours Tuesday, his owners confirmed to The State.
Clifford and Margaret had long participated in an annual Christmas production showcasing the birth, life and death of Jesus at their church. Each year, the church would rent a camel for the production, but it was expensive, Margaret told The State. She started to ask Clifford about whether they should adopt a camel themselves. Initially, he wasn’t on board.
“I said, ‘Well, let’s pray about it,’ and we did. And the next day, he said, ‘No. I prayed about it and Jesus said no.’ And I said ‘Well, I prayed about it and Jesus said yes,’” Margaret told The State when reached Tuesday. The couple got Abraham from a North Carolina petting zoo Oct. 7, 1996. On that same day 29 years later, Abraham died.
The Fishers made a name for their unusual pet by bringing him to just about anything for decades: charity events on Columbia’s Main Street, church vacation Bible schools, nursing homes and Lexington Blowfish baseball games. He worked two final events on Friday, one at a local school, when the Fishers realized he was sick and took him to Georgia for treatment.
On special nights at the Lexington County Baseball Stadium, like opening night or an allstar game, Blowfish owner Bill Shanahan would call Clifford and ask him to bring Abraham.
“Cliff always made it happen,” Shanahan, co-owner of the summer collegiate team, told The State. “He would park the trailer out in front of the stadium and Abraham’s head would stick out so all the kids and all the families, before they even got into the ballpark, they got to see Abraham. He was there to make everybody smile and have a good time.”
Abraham made appearances at numerous parades across the county. He attended the town’s reopening of Virginia Hylton Park last year. At this year’s annual Shamrock Parade, a Saint Patrick’s Day parade through downtown Lexington, Clifford brought his camel.
“Parades won’t be the same without him,” Hazel Livingston, the town of Lexington’s mayor, said.
Abraham was an integral part of an annual production known as “Jesus is His Name.” The ministry was started in 2016, an offshoot of a long-running production from Lake Murray Baptist Church that covered the birth, life and death of Jesus. The free production at the South Congaree Arena is set to take place on weekends from Dec. 5 until Dec. 20 this year.
“That’s the reason I bought him — to help tell the story about the birth of Christ,” Clifford told The State in 2018. “He’s really got his own little following.”
When reached by a reporter Tuesday, Margaret said Abraham was proof that God could use “even a silly camel” to bring people to Christ. She said that although he never spoke a word, Abraham “brought more people to Christ than any of us in our entire lifetime would be able to do.”
Aside from the work Abraham and his owners did in Christian ministry, the camel had another love, one that he became quite well-known for: guzzling Mountain Dew. The shtick — which involved someone, usually Clifford, giving Abraham an open plastic bottle of Mountain Dew before he tossed his head back and gulped down the contents — got its start when the camel was young.
“I used a Mountain Dew bottle to bottle feed him for a year [when he was young],” Clifford said previously. “He imprinted on the green bottle. But he does like Mountain Dew. It’s for being a good boy.”
The camel was like a son to the Fishers, Livingston said. Abraham and Clifford were particularly close.
“It was a team. It was Clifford and Abraham that people were drawn to because he was just a symbol of our community. He was big, but at the same time, he was gentle and I think Clifford played a big part in that,” Livingston said.
The towering camel worked election campaigns — both for Clifford’s campaign when he ran for, and won, a seat on the Lexington County Council last year and Margaret’s run for County Coroner in 2014. Clifford joked with The State in 2018 that if Abraham ran for county coroner, he’d have to go outside of Lexington for Margaret’s sake.
“If he ran for office, he’d win,” Clifford said, at the time.
On social media Tuesday, members of the community mourned Abraham in Facebook comments and posts. A small gathering near the Fishers’ home to welcome them back as they brought Abraham home from Georgia was planned.
“We are saddened to hear of the passing of Abraham the Camel,” the Greater Cayce West Columbia Chamber of Commerce posted to its Facebook page, alongside photos of the camel. “Abraham has been a part of the CWC and attended so many chamber events over the years. You will be missed.”
“I had no idea it was making this kind of impact on this county,” Clifford told The State when reached by phone Tuesday. “I enjoyed watching people smile and love on him and drink his Mountain Dew, that was his only trick, that always made everybody laugh.”
This story was originally published October 7, 2025 at 1:02 PM.
