A "large aggressive" camel trampled to death two people at a farm in Texas, according to law enforcement authorities. 
 
 Deputies from the Wichita Falls Sheriff’s Office arrived at the Camel Kisses Camel Farm Saturday afternoon and found a very aggressive camel with blood on his chest and on his mouth. 
 
 They found the bodies of 53-year-old Mark Mere and 72-year-old Peggy McNair, the owner of the farm, near where the camel was standing. Game wardens killed the animal. 
 
 "A large aggressive camel was in the area as well, and it took deputies several minutes to move it to another location," Wichita County Sheriff David Duke said in a news release. It appears that both victims were trampled by the camel." 
 
 KFDX-TV quoted Duke as saying the camel was acting aggressively. The camel was in a pen with two female camels. Mere entered the pen because the water trough had frozen and then was attacked. 
 
 The station reported that as Mere tried to get out of the pen, McNair tried to close the gate and the camel attacked both of them. 
 
 Their bodies were sent to Tarrant County for an autopsy. 
 
 The Wichita Falls Times Record News said McNair, a former bank vice president, had raised camels for nearly 20 years. 
 
 The paper said the farm and the camels were a popular attraction for children. 
 
 Wichita Falls is on the border with Oklahoma. 
 
 The Associated Press contributed to this report. ||||| “Come on, girls!” 
 
 Peggye McNair stands at the barbed wire fence at the side of U.S. Highway 287, west of Iowa Park. She has parked her car, with its license plate that reads simply, “Camels.” She calls to 20 camels grazing in the distance on the Texas field and tosses treats over the fence. 
 
 Hearing her voice, they begin coming. One, then two, then five and six — lope across the pasture, their large lips flapping as they run. 
 
 Seven, eight, nine. Fifteen, 16. Soon, 20 camels strain against the fence, stretching their long necks toward McNair, angling for a touch and a treat. Happy to comply, McNair feeds cork-sized pellet treats into their large, velvety mouths. 
 
 Their googly, golf-ball-sized black eyes are fringed with flirty two-inch-long eyelashes — on 2 sets of eyelids. With their split upper lips, their giant rabbit-like faces, prehistoric-like necks, humped bodies and eight-foot stance, they immediately draw attention from passersby. One by one, cars pull off the highway to get an up-close look at a sight that’s hard to match, even in a zoo: Face-to-face with 20 camels who are being hand-fed and petted. 
 
 “I wondered what that lady was doing,” said one man from Sweeney, Texas, who pulled off the road to gawk. He joked that he saw the camels and thought, “I done drove too far. I’m out of Texas!” Then he saw her “Camels” license plate. “I figured she must know what she’s doing,” he said. 
 
 She does. This herd is McNair’s own. 
 
 She has raised the 20 camels since each was 5 days old. The camels — all female except for one male, the bull — are all tame as dogs, and just as appreciative of the stroking on their furry heads and necks. 
 
 “I was vice president of American National Bank for years,” McNair said as a camel nibbled a treat out of her hand with his finger-like lips. “This is the most fun I’ve ever had in my life.” 
 
 One camel grips the dog-food-sized bag of calling cubes in his mouth and lifts it over McNair’s head, then puts it down. Another camel pokes his head inside the bag, his snout and ears momentarily disappearing inside. 
 
 “You want the whole sack?” McNair chides, patting her. 
 
 McNair was introduced to the art of camel breeding 13 years ago when she met, and soon married, (A.B.) Bob Hudson in 1996. 
 
 At the time, he had more than 100 camels in a herd on each of his nine ranches, the largest camel breeder in the country. He had earned over $1 million in the past decade from the original 20 camels that he had shipped from Australia to his ranches. 
 
 In the 1980s, he had read an article in the Wall Street Journal about an experiment in brush control using camels. It piqued his interest and spurred his purchase. He learned there was a market for the babies — for pets, for the movies, for nativity scenes, for ranches, and for a variety of odd-ball projects. 
 
 “He couldn’t understand why more people wouldn’t do it,” McNair said of the business. 
 
 McNair had grown up with pets of all sorts. “But never in my wildest imagination would I have thought I’d have camels,” she said. But McNair came to love the eight-foot-tall beasts. She grew so attached to the baby camels that she cried every time Hudson transported them out of the driveway and off to a sale. Seeing her tears, her husband, now deceased, advised her to start her own herd. So she did. Her company, called “Camel Kisses,” carries on his breeding business. 
 
 She will auction off a 6-week-old white baby camel at Missouri’s Exotic Animal Sale next week. “I’m very selective who I sell to,” says the woman who loves animals so much that she air conditions the garage for her dogs. “I sell only to reputable people who love animals as much as I do.” 
 
 Camels are the only species where the females bring twice the money that the males bring. A white camel baby — like the one her white bull often produces — will bring even more. 
 
 McNair had expected to have 16 babies this year to sell, but so far has had only 10. She fears the worst: that poachers have cut into her fences and stolen some of the newborns. 
 
 This 6-week-old baby, with his curly Berber carpet-like coat, is boarded at the Wichita Falls Humane Society, where he has been babied by affectionate workers who say they have been smitten by his curious demeanor and his exuberant “happy dance” — a bouncing motion. He ambles eagerly through the Humane Society’s building, where he sucks his furry lips on any visitor’s fingers, stands still for stroking of his head and humpy back, and sucks hungrily on a gallon-sized baby bottle of milk. 
 
 Camels have gotten a bad rap, McNair said. 
 
 Like dogs, if they are raised with cruelty, they will be dangerous — as they are in many other countries. But, also like dogs, if they are raised with love, affection, attention, treats and companionship — as hers are — they will be as tame and enjoyable as an eight-foot dog in the back yard. 
 
 Of course, there are some caveats, she said. When she visits the eight-foot adults in the pasture, she always stays in a vehicle or separated by a fence. She cites a story of two women who were killed by camels they had raised as pets when the bull knocked them down and planted his front feet on them — a mating ritual. 
 
 McNair always takes precautions to be safe with such enormous animals, she said. She avoids the male entirely when he’s in rut. 
 
 Camels are so social that when anyone tells McNair they want to purchase one, she always urges them to purchase two. Bad-tempered camels in zoos are often boarded alone, stand tethered all day, and not given space to graze, she said. “That’s the kind of zoo I will not sell to,” she said. 
 
 McNair visits her herd every other day. She feeds them twice a week. She checks them for pregnancies and disposes of plastic and paper debris that collects along the highway that — if ingested — could be dangerous to their breathing and digestion. 
 
 She recently purchased a new home with pasture land, which will soon allow her to keep her herd in her own backyard. 
 
 When she started raising the camels, McNair purchased $800 worth of books to read up on how to raise and care for them. But to her surprise, every book was about raising camels in third-world countries, not in America. 
 
 Now a walking encyclopedia on camels and their care, she may write her own book one day and pass on what she’s learned. 
 
 With every visit to the camel pasture, she’s reminded that people are curious about the eight-foot creatures. The cars stop, one after another, along the highway as she tends to them. Gawkers pepper her with questions, which she happily answers. Then, one Lookyloo passes her information on to the next one that pulls up. 
 
 “Where did you get these?” asks a young man and his girlfriend. They drove by, turned around and came back to see the camels up close and photograph them. 
 
 As the camels stand at the fence, a look of serenity on their furry exotic faces, she launches into her explanation that is now well-rehearsed. 
 
 “Well, I bought them when they were little babies...” ||||| Wichita Falls, TX- 
 
 Two people are dead after a camel trampled them at a Wichita Falls camel farm Saturday afternoon. 
 
 
 
 Wichita County Sheriff David Duke says their bodies were found just after 2:30 p.m. at Camel Kisses Camel Farm off FM 367 near Wellington Ln. 
 
 
 
 They have now been identified as 72-year-old Peggye McNair, who was the owner of the farm, and 53-year-old Mark Mere. 
 
 
 
 Duke says Mere got into a pen with three camels, one male and two females. He says he got into the pen because the water trough had frozen over. 
 
 
 
 According to Duke, the male camel was in rut and was very aggressive. The camel then charged Mere. As Mere tried to get out of the pen, Duke says McNair tried to close the gate but the camel then came after both of them and trampled them to death. 
 
 
 
 Deputies arrived on scene and say all three camels were acting very aggressive toward them. 
 
 
 
 He says the family of the camel farm owner gave permission for game wardens to put down the male camel. 
 
 ||||| A Wichita County woman known for raising camels was killed Saturday, along with a male companion. 
 
 The Wichita County Sheriff’s Office reports Peggye McNair, 72, and Mark Mere, 53, were found lying in a fenced area in the 4200 block of FM 367. 
 
 A release from the Sheriff’s Office said both people had suffered trauma and were dead when deputies arrived. 
 
 “A large aggressive camel was in the area as well and it took deputies several minutes to move it to another location. It appears that both victims were trampled by the camel,” the release said. 
 
 The bodies have been sent to Tarrant County for autopsy. 
 
 McNair, a former vice president of American National Bank in Wichita Falls, had raised camels for nearly 20 years, following her late husband into the business and hobby. 
 
 She operated Camel Kisses Ranch, which was often opened for children to come see the humped animals that are native to Asia, the Middle East and parts of Africa. ||||| 2 : the period of time during which rut occurs : breeding season 
 
 1 : a periodic and often annually recurring state of certain male animals (such as deer or elk) during which behavior associated with the urge to breed is displayed 
 
 : to be in or enter into a state of rut 
 
 Definition of rut (Entry 2 of 4) 
 
 2 : a usual or fixed practice especially : a monotonous routine fall easily into a conversational rut 
 
 b : a groove in which something runs 
 
 1a : a track worn by a wheel or by habitual passage 
 
 Definition of rut (Entry 3 of 4) 
 
 : to make a rut in : furrow 
 
 Definition of rut (Entry 4 of 4) 
 
 1607, in the meaning defined above 
 
 1552, in the meaning defined at sense 1a 
 
 1600, in the meaning defined above 
 
 15th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1 
 
 History and Etymology for rut 
 
 Noun (1) 
 
 Middle English rutte, from Middle French ruit rut, disturbance, from Late Latin rugitus roar, from Latin rugire to roar; akin to Middle Irish rucht roar, Old Church Slavonic rŭžati to neigh 
 
 Noun (2) 
 
 perhaps modification of Middle French route way, route
– A "large, aggressive camel" on a farm in Texas trampled the farm's owner and another person to death Saturday, Fox News reports. Officers in Wichita Falls say the bodies of owner Peggye McNair, 72, as well as Mark Mere, 53, were found near a male camel with blood on its mouth and chest. The camel, housed with two females, was in rut, or sexually excited and aggressive, says the county sheriff, per KFDX. Mere entered the animals' pen to deal with a frozen water trough, and the male charged him, the sheriff says. When McNair tried to shut the gate, the camel attacked the pair. McNair's family allowed authorities to put down the camel, KFDX notes. McNair, who raised camels for almost 20 years, ran Camel Kisses Ranch, where children visited, the Times Record News reports. That paper reported on McNair's work in 2009, noting that she was raising 19 females and one male. A former bank vice president, she said that the farm was "the most fun I’ve ever had in my life." That report called the camels as "tame as dogs." (In October, a Chicago-area man was killed by a camel he tried to save.)