It's Still Hump Day on North Bryant Street

“It’s in between breaking a horse and training a dog,” Edwin Snell says, looking it his 3,000-pound, double-hump camel. “When I first break them…I get them used to the saddles and I just tie them to the back of a truck and I have somebody drive while I just hold on. We run them and get the buck out of them,” he said.

To teach them to turn, Snell said, he tells the driver to turn left or right via Walkie Talkie so the animal learns the commands. He’s also got to teach them not to spit and to lay down, as well as how to follow simple commands like taking one step forward or backing out of his “Camel Tow” trailer.

Growing up in Clovis, N.M., Snell’s family raised horses and bought their first camel when he was 10 at an exotic animal auction outside San Antonio. The camel was a single-hump, and even though they’d had no experience with the animals, Snell and his father thought it might be interesting to own one.

“I was like, ‘that thing’s cool!’ and he was like, ‘if I buy it, you break it,’” Snell recalled. “We didn’t know anything about camels. We just thought we’d try it and it turned out we liked them and he helped me get this one when I was 11. He was actually wild, so we had to catch him and tame him and train him and everything.”

Snell’s camel, Caesar, has been in the family for 15 years now and has become an attraction for families and children across the state at weekend shows. For the past week, Caesar and Snell’s “zony”, a Shetland-zebra mix, have been in the parking lot in the 900 block of Bryant offering rides to curious kids, adults and the elderly.

“People have really enjoyed it,” he said. “It’s something unique that you don’t really get to do very often, especially riding up on one.”

Snell said when Caeser and the zony aren’t out on the road, they live at a ranch his family owns. They’re like pets, he said, and the family also owns a full-blood zebra and several horses. The camel, however, is the main attraction when they visit towns offering rides.

“They’ve (camels) got the intelligence of around a 10-year-old,” he said. “They’re really, really smart and they’ve got a good memory, so even like doing this, if he’s not quite on the mark where I need him, I just tell him, ‘step up one,’ and he’ll take one step forward and look at me.”

Maintenance on the animal is time consuming and expensive, Snell said; Caesar is a Mongolian camel and there are only an estimated 1,000 in the world. Federal guidelines dictate that the camel must visit a veterinarian twice a year since it’s an endangered species, and when he’s not circling the parking lot with children on his back, he’s eating.

“They have the multi-chambered stomachs like cows have, so it’s pretty much the same diet as that, but he’ll eat about as much as four horses,” Snell said.

The camel’s diet consists of hay, grass, fruit and trees, but the fruit is reserved for special occasions due to cost. He can drink up to 30 gallons of water, and eats 50-100 pounds of food a day.

Snell, Caesar and the zony have been set up in the parking lot in the 900 block of Bryant since Saturday, and stay from noon to 8 p.m. daily until Sunday. The lot is the future site of the Icon Theater, which Snell’s parents own, and when he’s not out with the animals he installs audio-visual equipment in the theaters.

Camel rides run $10 at the lot and zony rides run $5. For more information on the animals, visit their Facebook page.