Finding Camel-Lot at County Fair
Her ears are close to her head, curling in upon themselves with the delicacy of a nautilus shell. Her head is covered with soft silver-gray curls and her eyes are large and brown, with that wide-open wonder of all young things. She was 24 hours old when I saw her a few days ago. Her name is Indio and she is the first camel to be born at the Riverside County Fair/National Date Festival in Indio.
Guy Sherrill, an animal handler and trainer who works with the Bill Rivers Animal Shows, showed us the baby. Sherrill used to be a rodeo rider, but he says he gave it up. He keeps Brahma bulls, some of which he rides. He says that one of them has a gait as easy as a horse. The bulls look as big as buildings. They all perform in the animal show.
Sherrill is a handsome, blue-eyed man who was obviously fond of his charge. Indio was in a large van on a thick bed of clean straw. When Sherrill opened the door to the van and called to her, she started to get up. It took her a while because she seemed to have about four knees in each leg, each one bending the opposite direction from the one next to it. She got her rear legs collected first, and after three false starts she managed the front ones and stood erect and stumbled over to Sherrill. She made a soft sound like a lonesome puppy.
Her mother will not have anything to do with her. She nipped her and pushed her away, so Sherrill took the baby and put her in the straw-filled van. Now, they are milking the mother and feeding Indio as often as she demands.
“All she wants to do is eat. When she finally got the hang of it, I can’t fill her up,” Sherrill said.
This is the mother’s first calf, and Sherrill hopes that she will eventually care for the baby.
In the animal compound, we also met Earl, a large goose wearing a red bandanna and leading his owner around. The owner is Fess Reynolds. He says that when he is doing his animal show, Earl stands in the middle of the arena on the platform with him and watches every gesture and command to be sure Fess is doing it right. Earl is belligerently protective of Fess. When Sherrill extended his hand toward Fess, Earl reached his neck out and brandished his beak at Sherrill. Very rough goose.
Next to Indio we enjoyed the petting zoo the most. It is presented by Vons supermarkets and is a fine ark-ful of domestic and wild animals. There were midget goats, silver and black and white, and three baby midget goats, each about the size of a cat. They were curled up together like a snarl of gray and white yarn and their mothers stood near by.
There were full-sized goats and that amiable wonder, a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig. You can see a great bunch of these at the Los Angeles Zoo. They all look like Winston Churchill with their jowls overflowing their shoulders. Their bellies are large and swinging but as the one in the petting zoo spent most of his time watching the other animals from a prone position, this caused him no problem. There were at least six fawns dappled in silvery beige, demanding handouts from everyone they met.
There was a black-faced sheep that looked exactly like the ones that punctuate the hillside pastures in the west of Ireland.
There was a silky ebony Chinese chicken walking around among all the spindly legged creatures, his legs covered with long curly feathers. He looked like Zsa Zsa in an ostrich-feather trimmed negligee.
As soon as you walk on the grounds of the Riverside National Date Festival, the aroma of barbecue, roasted corn and hot dogs wafts past your nose, and you know you’re at a county fair. We saw a great many marvelous exhibits, and only managed about a third of it.
Jean Hunter, a friend of mine who has been working with the festival art exhibits for 10 years, happily told me of the excellence of the show of art and photography by Riverside County residents, all with glittering credentials. Jean has won herself a trophy case filled with awards.
I loved a great deal of it, especially the watercolors by Louise S. Daniels. She has a marvelous desert scene hanging, done in soft sandy shades of pink, gray, tan and blue. Unfortunately, I am out of walls.
The apex of the day was when Carol Waters, a treasured friend, took a camel ride. She has been in Egypt and visited the Great Pyramids but didn’t take the camel ride there. She did on our visit to the festival. She walked up a ramp and climbed into a metal frame with handholds on the camel. Then an animal trainer led her royally around the ring and another attendant took a picture so she could show her friends of little faith. I didn’t do it. Ah well, maybe next year.
Today is the last day of the Riverside County Fair/Date Festival. Come and enjoy.
