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(Image source: Flickr / wolf4max)
BY LORA VLAEVA
The short life of French President Francois Hollande’s baby camel — offered by Malian authorities — ended quite tragically this week after it was reportedly eaten by a local family.
Mali offered the camel to President Hollande as a sign of gratitude after the French military freed the Malian city Timbuktu from Islamic rebels in February. (Via Russia Today)
But during its first meeting with his new owner, the camel immediately proved to be a burden as it would shout whenever the President would try to touch it, even covering Mali officials’ speech with...
“MUAHHHH...MUAAAAH...MUAHHH” (Via Channel 4)
President Hollande raised his voice just enough so that he could joke around, promising he would use the camel as a mean of transportation in Paris as often as possible.
French magazine Valeurs Actuelles reports President Hollande wanted to transfer the animal to a Parisian zoo after having him vaccinated, but French authorities settled for a much easier option. France 24 reports on the camel’s tragic end. (Via Valeurs actuelles)
“It turns out that Francois Hollande decided that he couldn’t bring the camel back to France...So he offered it to a family, a local family in Timbuktu...who turned it into a tagine stew, which looks somewhat like this.”
Mali officials reacted to the news Tuesday, assuring President Francois Hollande he will NOT be left camel-less. The Daily Mail quotes a local official, saying:
"As soon as we heard of this, we quickly replaced it with a bigger and better-looking camel. The new camel will be sent to Paris. We are ashamed of what happened to the camel. It was a present that did not deserve this fate."
The Telegraph reports it is certainly not the first time French officials have been thanked with unusual “pets.”
“... among them an Asian elephant offered to François Mitterrand, two Bengal tigers given to George Pompidou and some bison presented to Valérie Giscard d'Estaing. Most spent a comfortable retirement in Paris zoos.”
But this camel wasn’t so lucky. But New York Magazine says it decided to pay the unfortunate camel one last tribute — putting him in a Taylor Swift mashup.
“Now I'm lying on the cold hard ground.”
(Camel)
“Trouble, trouble, trouble.”
(Via Big Machine Records)
The camel’s death was first announced by the French defense minister — who was in charge of weekly reports on the camel’s health.