Camels astray in Ireland

[blather_hq]

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/2004/0224/3608135311HM2CAMELS.html


Camels who went for a stroll on Limerick road recaptured
Karl Hanlon




Three camels broke free from a visiting circus to go for a stroll along a busy
dual-carriageway in the mid-west yesterday.


Motorists looked on in amazement as the animals loped along the verge of the
extremely busy Limerick to Ennis road at dawn yesterday.


"It was like something out of Lawrence of Arabia, except that it was on the
outskirts of Limerick and not in the middle of the Sahara Desert," said one
shocked motorist.


The three camels, named Brutus, Sheikh and Sahara, form part of the Daredevil
Circus and Stunt Show.


They managed to escape overnight from a field where they had been camped, and
surprised motorists who spotted the exotic animals grazing at the side of the
dual-carriageway shortly after 7.30 a.m. yesterday.


AA Roadwatch put out an early morning alert to motorists and road-users after it
was inundated with calls and texts from passing drivers.


Circus staff were alerted, and handlers assisted by gardaí were quickly at the
scene to round up the stray animals.


"I suppose it's a question of far away grass being greener. Camels can be very
inquisitive animals," said a circus spokesman.


The Bactrian camels - which have two humps - form part of the Daredevil Circus
and Stunt Show which is currently based in the outskirts of Limerick.


The animals are believed to originally come from Baktria, on the Oxus river in
northern Afghanistan.


Fortunately, none of the animals was harmed, and last night they were safely
back at their camp at the Two Mile Inn near Limerick.

 

[Imperial_Call]

There must be something wrong with the circuses that travel around Ireland, they're forever losing animals, an elephant escaped from one down here a few years back and ended up in someone's back garden. Why the fecker didn't just walk across the road from the fairground into our garden I'll never know mutter mumble crib whinge ...

 

[blather_hq]

Sure it's an island, where are they gonna run off to?

 

[GodzillaGirl]

That reminds me...

http://www.drumbarracks.org/Camels.html

In 1836 Maj. George H. Crosman urged the United States War Department to use camels in Indian campaigns in Florida because of the animals’ ability to keep on the move with a minimum of food and water. The matter came to the attention of Senator Jefferson Davis, whom President Franklin Pierce later appointed secretary of war. Davis’s first problem was that of coping with Indians and with transportation in Texas, but the enormous expense of the Mexican Cession of 1848 had seriously depleted available army resources. Davis firmly accepted the currently prevalent "Great American Desert" thesis, which held that much of the western United States was virtually uninhabitable. He urged Congress to appropriate money to test the value and efficiency of camels in the Southwest as a partial solution to pressing needs. At the insistence of the War Department, Congress passed, on March 3, 1855, the Shield amendment to the appropriation bill, which made $30,000 available "under the direction of the War Department in the purchase of camels and the importation of dromedaries, to be employed for military purposes." The "U.S. Army Camel Corps". was born.

On May 10, 1855, Maj H. C. Wayne received the special presidential assignment. The naval storeship Supply, in command of Lt. D. D. Porter, was placed at Wayne’s disposal. Wayne traveled ahead to study continental use of camels. After trafficking down the North African coast and spending $12,000 for desirable beasts, he returned with thirty-three camels, three Arabs, and two Turks. Thirty-two of the camels, plus one calf born at sea, arrived at Indianola, Texas, on April 29, 1856, but because of bad weather and shallow water were not unloaded until May 13. On June 4 Wayne started his caravan westward. They stopped near Victoria, where the animals were clipped and Mrs. Mary A. Shirkey spun and knit for the president of the United States a pair of camel-pile socks. The animals were finally located at Camp Verde, where several successful experiments were made to test the camels’ utility in the pursuit of Indians and the transportation of burdens. Wayne reported that camels rose and walked with as much as 600 pounds without difficulty, traveled miles without water, and ate almost any kind of plant. One camel trek was made to the unexplored Big Bend area of Texas.

The first camel importation was followed by a second, consisting of forty-one beasts, which were also quartered at Camp Verde. In the spring of 1857 James Buchanan’s secretary of war, John B. Floyd, directed Edward Fitzgerald Beale to use twenty-five of the camels in his survey for a wagon road from Fort Defiance, New Mexico, across the thirty-fifth parallel to the Colorado River. After this survey, the drive continued to Fort Tejon, California, where the camels were used to transport supplies and dispatches across the desert for the army. Eventually some of the animals were turned loose, some were used in salt pack-trains, and others even saw Texas again after Bethel Coopwood, Confederate spy and Texas lawyer, captured fourteen from Union forces. During the Civil War eighty camels and two Egyptian drivers passed into Confederate hands. The camels soon were widely scattered; some were turned out on the open range near Camp Verde; some were used to pack cotton bales to Brownsville; and one found its way to the infantry command of Capt. Sterling Price, who used it throughout the war to carry the whole company’s baggage. In 1866, the federal government sold the camels at auction; sixty-six of them went to Coopwood. Some of the camels in California were sold at auction in 1863, and others escaped to roam the desert.

The failure of the camel in the United States was not due to its capability; every test showed it to be a superior transport animal. It was instead the nature of the beasts which led to their demise-they smelled horrible, frightened horses, and were detested by handlers accustomed to the more docile mules. Two private importations of camels followed the government experiment. On October 16, 1858, Mrs. M. J. Watson reported to Galveston port authorities that her ship had eighty-nine camels aboard, and claimed that she wanted to test them for purposes of transport. One port official, however, felt that she was using the camels to mask the odor typically associated with a slave ship and refused her petition to unload the cargo. After two months in port, Mrs. Watson sailed for the slave markets in Cuba after dumping the camels ashore in Galveston, where they wandered about the city and died from neglect and slaughter around the coastal sand dunes. A second civilian shipment of a dozen camels arrived at Port Lavaca in 1859, where it met a similar fate.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Chris Emmett, Texas Camel Tales (San Antonio: Naylor, 1932).
Odie B. Faulk, The U.S. Camel Corps: An Army Experiment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).

 

[Melf]

Plus, they're really good at maths.
Sorry,... gratuitious T.Prachett joke.

ah! youre refering to youbastard then?

 

[hedgewizard1]

Crosman, camles, and Florida

Actually, while Maj. Crosman did advocate the use of camles, they were never used here in Florida. There is no trouble finding water or forage here. In fact, there is so much of both that the Spanish simply turned thier cattle and hogs loose to fend for themselves.

For more info on the great American camel experiment, try http://www.nal.usda.gov/awic/pubs/camelimport.htm

I should also add that the term "great American desert" did not denote a large, dry, sandy region, but rather one of unused, unihabited country.