Mali plans to send a replacement Camel to French President Francois Hollande, after the first beast presented to the visiting dignitary became stew.

Hollande visited Mali in February, after sending French troops to the Northern African nation to fight radical Islamic militants.  Locals presented with a camel for his troubles, and he left it with a local family for safe keeping until it could be shipped north to a Zoo.  The French Prime Minister joked he would use it to get around the traffic jams of Paris.

But, there was a miscommunication, and the animal was promptly butchered and used in Tagine.  Quite possibly a delicious Tagine.  But this was a gift camel, and you don’t put a gift camel in your mouth.

“As soon as we heard of this, we quickly replaced it with a bigger and better-looking camel,” an anonymous Malian official told reporters, “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.”