This WaPo article never mentions the possibility, but I have to wonder if the time of the cows in America may be ending, to be replaced by camels.
The camels had thump-thumped for seven days across northern Kenya, ushered by police reservists, winding at last toward their destination: less a village than a dusty clearing in the scrub, a place where something big was happening. People had walked for miles to be there. Soon the governor pulled up in his SUV. Women danced, and an emcee raised his hands to the sky. When the crowd gathered around an enclosure holding the camels, one man said he was looking at “the future.”
The camels had arrived to replace the cows.
Cows, here and across much of Africa, have been the most important animal for eons — the foundation of economies, diets, traditions.
But now grazable land is shrinking. Water sources are drying up. A three-year drought in the Horn of Africa that ended last year killed 80 percent of the cows in this part of Kenya and shattered the livelihoods of so many people.
If, faced with the same climate conditions, would Americans stubbornly hold on to cows, or would we switch to camels? It brings in dizzying visions of the Strategic American Reserve of Camels.
