If you had asked me yesterday if there is a circumstance in which you should bite a camel’s testicles, I would have said, “No, there is absolutely no reason anyone should ever bite a camel’s testicles.” Today, I’ve learned that indeed, there might be a good reason for just such an act.
However, today I read a report from Louisiana newspaper the Advocate about a Florida woman who bit a camels testicles at a truck stop petting zoo after the animal sat on her.
That might be a good reason to bite a camel’s testicles.
But it also seems like the camel had a very good reason to sit on the woman.
Before I proceed, I will clarify that Gizmodo does not endorse the behaviour of any human or mammal involved in this incident, including the humans who hold the dromedary camel in captivity. And it sounds like this would not have happened if humans weren’t cruel idiots.
Caspar, the camel, lives at the Tiger Truck Stop in Grosse Tete, about 30km outside of New Orleans, which has a petting zoo that reportedly also contains a baby kangaroo, a coati and miniature horse. According to the Advocate, for years the truck stop has faced criticism from animal rights activists over a tiger that the owners held in captivity at the location until it died last year. The truck stop does not hide how it feels about these advocates — its Facebook banner shows an image of a tiger licking its lips next to the phrase, “Animal activists taste like chicken!”
According to the Advocate, the ball-biting incident began last Wednesday when the woman’s husband threw dog treats into Caspar’s living space. The couple’s dog went inside the fence. Then the couple, who were not identified, crawled under a strand of barbed wire. The man reportedly pushed Caspar and swatted its hat at the camel. The camel proceeded to sit on the woman.
Then she reacted by biting Caspar’s testicles.
“She said, ‘I bit his balls to get him off of me, I bit his testicles to get him off of me,’” Iberville Parish Deputy Louis Hamilton Jr. told the Advocate, following an investigation that reportedly found the woman and her husband had provoked Caspar.
“The camel did nothing wrong,” Hamilton told the newspaper “They were aggressive. The camel was just doing its normal routine.”
Authorities didn’t deem the truck stop at fault because signs warned visitors to stay out of the camel’s enclosure.
“The camel has never been aggressive, the camel has never gotten out, never caused any issues,” Hamilton told the Advocate. “My only question to her husband was: ‘Why did you throw the doggy treat under the fence?… And he just said, ‘I wasn’t thinking.’”