Javelinas in our Backyard

Our backyard gets visitors periodically, even though it's fenced as a dog run. They (the Javelinas) systematically uproot dozens of mamillaria cacti and eat the roots. So we pick up the buds and put them into sand-filled pots to reroot, then plant them for the next invasion. To get at least something out of it, I made the whole party pose for a painting.

 Even though they look deceivingly similar to wild boars Javelinas or Peccaries are only distant relatives of pigs. Taxonomically they are members of the same suborder, Suina, but are in their own family, Tayassuidae (New World pigs). They sport two pairs of big canines as opposed to just one in Oldworld Pigs.
But like pigs, they live in family groups, and root for their food with very similar snouts. As ours live in the desert, I never saw them enjoy mud baths, but our Arizonan, New Mexican and Texan Javelinas  live at the northern most tip of their distribution area which reaches all the way south to Argentinia. So they must use  many different types of habitats.
They are territorial and use skunk-smelling secretions of their  scent glands (below each eye and  on their backs) for marking and communication. If hunted for food, these glands have to be carefully and immediately removed or the meat is spoiled. I have eaten jerky and fresh, grilled tenderloin as guset of Mexican gold miners and it was very good.
Javelinas are rather nearsighted and also quite fearless, which results in frequent close encounters between them and human and caninen Arizona residents. Often the Javelinas just go quietly about their business. While house-sitting in the Tucson foothills at First Avenue, I once found myself surrounded by a herd  between garage and patio. They were so peaceful that I reached out to touch the big patriarch when he walked close to me. He screamed with indignation and bristled. Other people have been less lucky,  and those big canines leave bad wounds. My 40 pound Healer-type dog Bilbo got into a fight with a single Javelina last year, and he came away from it with a big, gaping chest wound. But at other times my dogs have cornered the entire resident herd including young ones and nothing happened. With Javies, you just never know.  So don't ever feed them, not even inadvertently by  keeping garbage or compost in accessible containers. The more the 'desert pigs' get habituated to humans and their houses, the more confrontations happen, and those usually end with killing or removal of the javelina herd, and our desert is all the poorer for it.

What a day!

 Rain! Cultures have many words for the things that are important to them. Here in the desert that has always been rain. I don't know many words of the Tohono O'odam language, but I do know that they call the violent downpours of the summer monsoon male rain and the soft drizzle of the winter month is female rain. The monsoon can be more destructive than beneficial and the winter rain should be rich and nurturing. Historically, December used to be the month with the highest precipitation.  I remember years of heavy flooding in March in the early nineties. But for the last seven or eight years we often waited in vain for our winter rains.

So today we felt very content to see clouds roll in from south and west, obscuring Wassem Peak and Kit Peak, rain drumming on the roof and blowing into the patio. I planned on a day of peaceful painting - finishing the Costa's Hummer sketch  above and starting something new...

But it wasn't going to be. Yesterday we had found cattle tracks on the grounds and discovered that an earlier rain had washed out the ground under the fence, so small cows could walk through. The wire of the electric dog fence is broken, too. Around noon today I heard the dogs barking in the neighboring quarry as if they had treed a big cat (at least I think it would sound like that, it has never happened so far). I got worried and crawled through the quarry fence to follow them. Of course, my appearance gave them just the momentum and confidence they needed to dislodge not a cat but some big javelinas that they had driven from our land into the lower part of our lone Twin Peak (its twin was mined away by Portland Cement). As I was watching, a line of seven adult javelinas emerged from the rocks. They moved somewhat stately and slowly, but the dogs were in mad pursuit. Eventually they scattered most of the herd.

Javelinas or Peccaries way between 35 and 60 pounds

 One big guy stayed behind between me (with Laika) and the action. His hackles were up, nearly doubling his size, he was grunting and showing me his widest side. The dogs cornered some of the other Javelinas at the quarry tailings. Now I had to worry about rock avalanches in addition to javelina teeth.  It took nearly an hour until, with Randy's help, all three male dogs were back on leashes. They were exhausted and dirty but had only some scrapes on legs and faces - nothing that looked like a javelina bite. This was lucky because the pig-like javelinas or peccaries have huge teeth and their bites leave deep holes in legs and bellies of dogs - we've had some injuries before.