Posted on 05/30/2006 2:43:11 PM PDT by SwinneySwitch
CUERO — The bellows and growls of camels on the move are again echoing across Texas, thanks to history buffs who are retracing the path of cloven footprints left 150 years ago.
On May 20, six camels left the Port of Indianola, where in 1856 the first of about 100 of the animals imported by the Army arrived. The six were bound for Camp Verde, site of a frontier-era camel base.
Along the way, Doug Baum and other handlers are holding show-and-tell sessions at civic clubs, school campuses and even at the Alamo on the great "camel experiment."
"I think this is so fantastic," said Peggy Boone, a worker at Cuero Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, as two camels arrived Friday for residents to inspect.
"I like 'em. They're pretty," said Joseph Kutac upon meeting his first camel in all his 79 years.
"Do they pitch like a donkey?" he asked.
Baum fielded many such questions from the crowd assembled on the center's lawn.
Ropes tied between their front legs barred any sudden departures by Gobi, a 15-year-old Bactrian (two-hump), or Richard, a 10-year-old dromedary (one hump).
"I hobble them because I can't hobble the public," joked Baum, 38. "I take it for granted that the public has no clue about how to act around large animals."
Too much food and too little exercise led Gobi's humps to slump, said Baum, a former zoo keeper who runs a Valley Mills company that offers camel excursions here and abroad.
Between queries, he explained how the U.S. government approved $30,000 in the 1850s to bring camels to Texas to serve as pack animals and on westward survey expeditions.
Sure-footed, able to lug 750 pounds and go months without water, camels are far superior to horses and mules, Baum said.
But the camel militarization project launched by Jefferson Davis when he was secretary of war failed because of politics — human and equine.
Horses and mules became uncontrollable in the presence of the strange beasts, he said, and the initiative suffered from post-Civil War guilt by association with Davis, president of the Confederate States of America.
"One of the great myths is the Army abandoned them because they couldn't handle walking on rocks in West Texas," Baum said. "That's crazy. I guide them on treks in Egypt, where the ground makes that look like a velvet rug."
Although the Army didn't stick with the experiment, Baum said, camels have proven their value worldwide as beasts of burden.
"We have the only deserts on the globe that don't utilize camels," he said.
The British shipped camels to Australia in a similar experiment that lasted until the animals were turned loose about 1950. Now, Baum said, there's 250,000 "feral camels" raising Cain and breeding "like rabbits."
The six camels on the modern-day 215-mile trek ride mostly in trailers because of the hazards of walking along roads. But they quickly draw a crowd at stops.
When Gobi knelt on the pavement outside the retirement home Friday, 101-year-old Julia Dunn sidled up in her wheelchair to pet him.
"They look like they're real kind and gentle," she said.
An all-day festival is planned next Saturday in Camp Verde to mark the return of camels to the tiny community on Texas 173 between Bandera and Kerrville.
"It's a big deal," said Sara Best of the Camp Verde Store and Post Office, which opened in 1857. There's a camel on its logo, and the store offers camel carvings, camel hats, camel figurines and camel books among its vast inventory.
Also escorting the camels is Gil Tafolla Hernandez of San Antonio, whose great-great-grandfather, James Tafolla, was among Army troops who brought frontier camels inland and cared for the camels in Camp Verde after the Civil War.
"It's one chance in a lifetime to relive an excursion like this that a family member made," said Hernandez, 47, wearing buckskin boots and a tomahawk on his belt. "I'm a part of it now, and he was a part of it 150 years ago."
Another participant is Jim Hale, whose Big Lake business, American Camel Co., rents camels for movies and commercials, and sells them as well.
Baby male camels start at $5,000, Hale said, but a well-trained adult is "priceless."
Chronicling the trip is Frank Gonzales of San Antonio, who's writing a book on the camel experiment he calls "a very important piece of Texas history."
"They proved successful," he said of the frontier camels, but the government "didn't carry through with the experiment after the Civil War.
"By 1869, the whole thing was abandoned," said Gonzales, 53. "The camels were sold at auctions to zoos, mining companies, private owners and transport business ventures. Some of them were even turned out into the wild."
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zeke@express-news.net
Texas Camel Corps Ping!
In Syria, once, at the head-waters of the Jordan, a camel took charge of my overcoat while the tents were being pitched, and examined it with a critical eye, all over, with as much interest as if he had an idea of getting one made like it; and then, after he was done figuring on it as an article of apparel, he began to contemplate it as an article of diet. He put his foot on it, and lifted one of the sleeves out with his teeth, and chewed and chewed at it, gradually taking it in, and all the while opening and closing his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he had never tasted anything as good as an overcoat before, in his life. Then he smacked his lips once or twice, and reached after the other sleeve. Next he tried the velvet collar, and smiled a smile of such contentment that it was plain to see that he regarded that as the daintiest thing about an overcoat. The tails went next, along with some percussion caps and cough candy, and some fig-paste from Constantinople. And then my newspaper correspondence dropped out, and he took a chance in that--manuscript letters written for the home papers. But he was treading on dangerous ground, now. He began to come across solid wisdom in those documents that was rather weighty on his stomach; and occasionally he would take a joke that would shake him up till it loosened his teeth; it was getting to be perilous times with him, but he held his grip with good courage and hopefully, till at last he began to stumble on statements that not even a camel could swallow with impunity. He began to gag and gasp, and his eyes to stand out, and his forelegs to spread, and in about a quarter of a minute he fell over as stiff as a carpenter's work-bench, and died a death of indescribable agony. I went and pulled the manuscript out of his mouth, and found that the sensitive creature had choked to death on one of the mildest and gentlest statements of fact that I ever laid before a trusting public.
- Roughing It
MARK TWAIN
Eeeewwwwe. I thought those guys only used camels and donkeys as catchers, not pitchers!
Bump!
Nope, they are prone to worse than mule like stubborness, and besides that they will kick you when ugly ( which is often) and they will spit on you copiously if you do not smell like they do. they sometimes need to be handled roughly as discipline.
So if you want to be a succesfull camel handler, roll your clothes in camel dung before you put them on, and make with sweet talk and lots of sugar. Camels do nothing for you without complaint.
Two Bumps!
Area 52
Area 52!
They certainly look alien!
LOL, that's funny!
I don't know where you got it, but the creator failed to note that camels don't walk like a horse..
Camels advance both feet on a side... (rear left, fore left, rear right, fore right, and repeat..)
That's why they "sway" when they walk..
Found it on the WWW Drammach, the average person doesn't pay much attention to the gait of animals.
That particular camel would be most uncomfortable to ride, lol.
Hi Jolly (Haj Ali) rides again@
Is that good or bad??
OK, thanks, I missed it!
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