Javelinas

Sam Chess

You could smell them from a quarter mile away, they smell almost like skunk. In most neighborhoods, you’ll hear their presence--the sound of distant dogs barking in backyards. You’ll rarely spot them by themselves, they always travel with their family. Their color is hard to define; intertwined washes of tan, gray and black coat their tough fur exterior. This allows them to blend in quite well with the wooded desert landscape. They are not nearly as fat as your average farm pig (probably not fed as well), about the size of a Labrador. They have quite the temper when provoked; they can charge faster than you’d might expect. These wild boars are an unknown emblem of the American southwest. They wander silently, slowly, at all hours of the day and night. I still don’t really know where they stand on the food chain. As far as I’m concerned, they get their nutrition by knocking over our garbage can and feasting on all over our leftovers, like candy from a piñata. We would try leaving a few weights on top of the lid, but they still managed to knock the whole can over most of the time. Finally, we switched to using a system of bungee cords to keep the lid shut. This is the best known method, the preferred method of southern Arizona residents. But, while the bungee cord would stop them from succeeding in opening the trash can, it wouldn’t stop them from trying to open the trash can. They would ram into it, even after they tipped it over, hoping to eat any of the wonderful garbage they are smelling. Often we would all abruptly awake to this clownish act and mistake it for a real threat. We’d shine flashlights, hiss, and go to sleep. During the day, if the javelinas approached our garbage can, we’d throw rocks at them. I’ll admit that it was fun to heave these rocks as close to these creatures’ bodies as we could. I even hit one one time.