A visit to the livestock barn at the Williams Veterinary Clinic on U.S. Highway 59 east of Beeville is almost like entering a foreign country these days.

There are two juvenile camels, a baby zebra and even a pen with a rare and endangered Jacob four-horned sheep.

And that doesn’t include some adult camels browsing in the pasture behind the barn.

Dr. Gary Williams, who is in charge of the menagerie, said this week that he has been keeping several camels from the Wild Side Safari, a game brokerage business on State Highway 359 between Tynan and Mathis, to comply with federal regulations for shipping the animals out of the country.

The ranch used to be known as Wayne’s World and animal lovers could tour the grounds and get up close and personal with all kinds of exotic critters.

“He’s a good customer,” Williams said of the owner.

The camel venture came up recently when a wealthy Mexican investor took his family to Spain. While there, family members took rides on some camels and they enjoyed themselves so much that the investor decided to offer camel rides at resorts he owns in Cancun and on the island of Cozumel.

Where does a wealthy Mexican investor find a camel? At the Wild Side Safari, of course.

Williams said he has been keeping the animals at his clinic to watch them, conduct medical tests and make sure they have no diseases or other problems before they are shipped to Mexico.

The process of sending animals from one country to another is complicated and controlled by many state and federal laws.

“It takes a special, interstate health certificate to ship animals out of the country,” the doctor said.

Williams said he has already shipped eight camels to Mexico. In addition to the adult camels, he has the two youngsters.

The doctor has been learning something about camels. There are two main types of camels. The Dromedary, or one-humped camel, is more docile than the Bactrian, or two-humped variety.

Camels do spit, just as the legends imply. And their urine is not the consistency of gelatin.

The Bactrian is more likely to spit than the Dromedary. But both kinds have been known to hack up a cud and apply it to an offending bystander.

Williams said when he is taking blood samples or otherwise badgering the camels, he listens for the sound of an animal bringing up a wad of thick stuff from its second stomach.

“It’s time to get out of the way,” Williams said.

Fortunately, the camels at Williams’ place are mostly Dromedaries.

But some of them are a hybrid variety.

“They’ve got a hump and a half,” Williams said.

Matthew Collier, one of Williams’ employees, was brave enough to walk into one of the pens in the barn with a photographer to get one of the juvenile camels to pose for a photo. Within seconds of entering the pen, the young zebra sharing the space took a dive into the water trough, drenching almost everything in the pen, including the camera.

Later, after the photographs were safely in the camera, Collier pointed out some Jacob four-horned sheep in the next pen.

“They’re supposed to be very rare,” Collier said of the woolly animals.

In fact, the sheep are considered endangered.

But they have apparently been around for eons and the experts believe they originated in Scandinavia.