A baby born with a 10cm-long ”tail” to an impoverished provincial family has brought locals flocking to make offerings and pray to her for luck, police in the south-eastern Cambodian province of Svay Rieng said on Friday.
Ngin Sophal, police chief of the province’s Svay Chrum district, 120km southeast of the capital, said that the baby, born on Wednesday, appeared to have a spine which is longer than normal, forming a distinctive tail, but is an otherwise normal, healthy baby.
”The unusual infant was born to a poor family. Now she is making a lot of local people come to see her tail. Soon she will attract people from different places further away. She is starting to earn money for her family now, so her birth is lucky,” he said.
The local Khmer-language newspaper Koh Santepheap quoted the mother, Sok Mao (36) as saying that before the as-yet-unnamed baby’s birth she dreamed an old man had come to her with a magic monkey that would bring her luck. Shortly afterwards, she gave birth to her daughter, whom the paper says is her first child.
The monkey is often seen as an auspicious animal in Cambodian culture.
The newspaper quoted the mother as saying that when people came to see her daughter and made offerings of money, she was happy, but when they did not make offerings, she became angry and cried. – Sapa-DPA