Camels are like 8-foot-tall dogs tor Texas breeder

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WICHITA FALLS, Texas - "Come on, girls!"

Peggye McNair stands at the barbed wire fence at the side of U.S. Highway 287. She has parked her car, with its license plate that reads simply, "Camels." She calls to 20 of the beasts 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 two sets of eyelids. With their split upper lips, their giant rabbit-like faces, almost prehistoric 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 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."

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 8-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.

"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 tended 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 8-foot dog in the back yard.

Of course, there are some caveats, she said. When she visits the 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.

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.

(Ann Work is a reporter for the Wichita Falls Times Record News in Texas.)