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| Javelina in the backyard garden - like a herd of mini-buffalo! |
Finally, after months of hearing about Javelina (or collared peccary) in the area, I actually saw them with my own eyes this early morning!
Peaking out the back door around 4-4:30 a.m. just to take a look at the clear night sky I heard 'munching' below the tree-lined edge of the back yard. Then I could just barely make-out little rounded shadows moving along as my eyes adjusted more to the low light! I must say the pre-dawn experience was exciting! There they were!
In the very spot I’d pointed out to a friend yesterday. I’d thought the indentations might be Javelina tracks in the rocky Arizona sandscape beyond the patio. Here was confirmation – in the dimly-lit hour of early morning – that I was right! One of them lay down in a depression and seemed to rub his back into the wallow spot just as I had imagined they might have been doing.
I counted seven gray moving figures, including three smaller youngsters, but could hear more of them deeper in the trees - munching and crunching, grunting and wallowing. The group in the yard didn’t seem to know or care that I was watching them. I imagine they were feeding on the fallen Mesquite bean pods that littered the ground. As I was able to make out the shapes of their rounded, mounded little bodies they looked more like a herd of mini-buffalo grazing beneath the mesquite and desert willow.
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| Nocturnal scavengers! |
Viewing them ‘munching along’ in my backyard – I thought, “they’re kinda cute!”
Then, as if on cue and just for me, I heard them ‘grunting’ like pigs. I stood in the darkness wondering – if they might be talking to each other about me watching them; maybe discussing whether the herd should be prepared to either run into the gulley or charge me!
I remember how my neighbor Kelly says they’ve trashed her vegetable garden on a number of occasions until Dan put up a fence to protect their tomatoes and root crops. I remember reading something that explained how a herd of Javelina will attack and do mortal damage to a dog without provocation.
This morning, Google tells me: “Peccaries are aggressive enough in temperament that, unlike Eurasian pigs, they cannot be domesticated as they are likely to injure humans. In recent years in north-western Bolivia near Madidi National Park there have been reports of people being seriously injured and killed by large groups of peccaries.”
So maybe they’re not THAT cute! And maybe I do want a bigger fence around my backyard!
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| Prickly pear - Javelina appetizer! |
- * All photos and written works copyrighted by B. Marie Jarreau unless otherwise noted.
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