It must have had the hump.

From News Centre 23:

An out of control camel killed two people in Texas.

The Wichita County Sheriff says a man went into a pen to break up ice in the water trough. A woman who owned the farm tried to close the gate to the area, but the camel was too fast and tramped bot people to death.

The sheriff says the camel was acting aggressively because it was getting ready to breed.

RH emails in much brighter news from the UK:

A WELLAND man has paid tribute to the "absolute hero" who came to his rescue after he was attacked by cows.

Joe Whitehouse, aged 67, was walking his dogs in Castlemorton Common when a herd of the 'spooked' animals approached him. He was rammed to the ground by one of the cows, which kept butting him as he lay prone on the floor...

"The cow continued to come at me and was butting me but Charlotte ran towards and it went away. But then about 20 yards away all the cows formed into a herd and started coming back at us.

"Charlotte ran at them again with her little dog and shouted and they turned and went."

It's usually the presence of dogs which trigger cow attacks, so it is surprising that adding one more dog to the mix finally scared the cows off.

So it's a double-salute to Ms Horrabin for fighting fire with fire and I'm sure we all wish Mr Whitehouse a speedy recovery.

The War On Humans/Animals* Daily Update

* Delete according to whether you are animal or human.

From the BBC:

Two wild elephants have gone on a rampage in southern India, killing at least one person, officials say. The elephants left a trail of destruction in a suburb of the city of Mysore, in the state of Karnataka.

Officials say the animals walked into the city from a nearby forest, leaving residents running for their lives. Officials say that one elephant barged into a women's college compound and wandered the grounds, while the other wreaked havoc in a residential area.

Spotter's Badge: Ross

From The Register:

An Adelaide-based entrepreneur has hit upon a novel method of fighting global warming: he intends to exterminate Australia's vast population of feral camels by means of gunfire from helicopters and jeeps, so preventing the beasts from unleashing a deadly planet-wrecking miasma of greenhouse gas from their rumbling guts.

The idea is that the War On Dromedaries would be paid for – and indeed, turn a profit – by selling government carbon credits issued on the basis that a dead camel cannot be emitting methane by means of belch or trouser cough. Methane is a vastly more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, so the elimination of even quite small sources of it can equate to a substantial carbon-emissions reduction.

According to the FT, a camel's annual farts contribute as much to global warming as one ton of CO2, for comparison, a car doing 12,427 miles a year emits about four tons of C02, and "All “removals” will be humane, the company says, with shooting done by “animal welfare trained and accredited marksmen”."

Spotter's Badge: View From The Solent

Camel Attack

Spotted by Pavlov's Cat. Glorious:

Parody Singularity

Submitted by VFTS, from The Australian:

Scientists have found camels to be the third-highest carbon-emitting animal per head on the planet, behind only cattle and buffalo. Culling the one million feral camels that currently roam the outback would be equivalent to taking 300,000 cars off the road in terms of the reduction to the country's greenhouse gases.

But Climate Change Minister Penny Wong told The Australian there was little point doing anything about Australia's feral camels as only the CO2 of the domesticated variety is counted under the Kyoto Protocol. That equates to only a small number of the beasts, the sort found lugging tourists around Cable Beach in Broome and at Monarto Zoo, southeast of Adelaide...

Opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt reckons the government has "lost its marbles". "It's now reached the absurd situation where a camel in captivity is a threat to the planet but a feral camel in the wild is absolutely fine," Mr Hunt said, "While culling feral camels may or may not make a minor contribution to reducing our emissions, the real issue is the absurdity of Kevin Rudd's focus on meeting a bogus international accounting system rather than worrying about direct action."

A camel emits 0.97 of a carbon-equivalent tonne per year. According to the Carbon Reduction Institute, an average 1.8-litre car running on petrol and travelling 20,000km per year emits about 3.5 tonnes of carbon emissions annually. On that ratio - which is backed by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries - if 300,000 cars were taken off the road Australia's emissions would be slashed by an average of 1.05 million tonnes a year.

But exactly what sort of difference a large-scale camel cull would make to our carbon footprint remains in dispute. Senator Wong's office claims a camel cull would be the equivalent of taking just 500 cars off the road. But that is 1/600th of the 300,000-car assessment given by the opposition, which has vowed to cull the mammoth herd...

The Australian obtained two independent assessments of the mathematics of taking out the one million-strong feral camel herd: from the federal Parliamentary Library and also veterinary scientist George Wilson, an expert in animal greenhouse emissions.

Dr Wilson, who is head of consulting group Australian Wildlife Services, remains sceptical of the proposal to eradicate feral camels due to practical problems. But he, like the library, maintained that the Coalition had its numbers right.

A spokeswoman for Senator Wong said the "500 cars" carbon analogy was appropriate because only emissions from tourist ride-type camels counted under Kyoto. "The figures provided relate to anthropogenic emissions that count towards our national emissions target," the spokeswoman said. "This same principle applies elsewhere. For example, we don't include the emissions from bushfires or drought, because even though they impact on our emissions, they are not something in our direct control."

The absurdity of the UN carbon accounting systems was also highlighted by Mick Keogh, executive director of research group the Australian Farm Institute. Mr Keogh noted that while emissions from a deliberately lit bushfire count under Kyoto, they did not if the fire was caused by lightning. And it also varies depending on whether it razes privately owed land or a national park.

"When it's burning in the park, none of those emissions officially count, but when it spreads back out of the park to private land on the other side, it starts to again contribute to greenhouse emissions as measured by the UN's rules," he said.

Life copies satire

JuliaM in the comments here:

Weren't the Aussies contemplating a camel cull a while ago, but stymied by the problem of actually finding them in the outback? Well, problem solved! Commence bombing run!

From today's Metro:

Thousands of "marauding, wild" camels will be gunned down by helicopters after over-running a small town in Australia's Outback, officials have vowed.

About 6,000 of the animals have been wreaking havoc in Docker River after invading the town in search of water - trampling fences, smashing tanks and contaminating supplies. The Northern Territory government has now announced its plan for dealing with the camels, which have been arriving daily for weeks because of drought conditions in the region....

Shock And Awe

No deaths reported so far, but that's only a matter of time ...

Emailed by Mike.