Nightmare Fuel: Camel Kills Two Men At Tennessee Farm

Imagine the last thing you see in life is a camel standing over you with bad intentions and hellbent on killing you. Oh hell nooooooooo...don't do it....I'm innocent......nooooooooo....and you're dead.

Pure nightmare fuel.

The Obion County (TN) Sheriff's Department says a camel at Shirley Farms in Obion, TN killed two men around 5 p.m. Thursday night. Deputies showed up to the farm and found two men -- Bobby Matheny, 42 and Tommy Gunn, 67 -- unconscious and the camel still on the run.

While trying to move the two men to a safe space, the camel attacked a sheriff deputy's car and tried to attack deputies trying to move one of the victims to an EMS vehicle.

The sheriff's department says it had no choice but to kill the camel "for the safety of everyone on the scene," the department said in a statement.

“When animals are exploited for entertainment, this is not surprising. It’s tragic, but not surprising, and both animals and humans are at risk in situations like this,” Debbie Metzler, the Associate Director for Captive Animal Law Enforcement for PETA, told WBBJ.

Shirley's Pumpkin Barn is a fairly typical petting zoo where people bring their kids in the fall to grab a pumpkin and pet the animals. And then one day the animals fight back and two guys are killed in the camel pen.

Is it sad that two men lost their lives? Of course. Is it just the price one pays for flirtin' with disaster around wild animals? Yessir.

Camels are no joke. Let's go back to 2016 in India when a camel got tired of being outside in extreme heat and attacked his owner, eventually biting the guy's head off.

Or how about this story in 2019 where an angry camel pinned a Louisiana woman to the ground and forced her to bite his testicles to get him to move. “I bit his balls to get him off of me,” the woman told authorities. “I bit his testicles,” she said.

You've been warned, camel owners.

Keep your head on a swivel.


Written by
Joe Kinsey is the Senior Director of Content of OutKick and the editor of the Morning Screencaps column that examines a variety of stories taking place in real America. Kinsey is also the founder of OutKick’s Thursday Night Mowing League, America’s largest virtual mowing league. Kinsey graduated from University of Toledo.