I usually get to go on at least one walk each day, often with one or more of the Greyhounds. This evening, Mom and Dad took me and Cooper for a walk. There’s a rainstorm coming, so it might be our last walk for a couple of days; fortunately it was nice and long - and I saw a bunny! It was in the bushes beside the sidewalk, but then it disappeared. The bunnies around here are like that; you see them and watch them, but then they’re gone. I think they must be magic desert bunnies.
We kept walking, with me checking every bush to make sure the bunny wasn’t hiding in there. Then we passed some people who said that Cooper and I were “such beautiful dogs.” It’s so nice to be noticed and appreciated that I forgot about looking for bunnies.
A short time later we passed a shallow, freshly dug hole on the side of the road and Dad said he wondered what had been digging there. It was too big for a bunny hole, but I didn’t really get time to investigate it because Mom and Dad kept walking.
And then I saw it… Just a couple of dozen yards ahead of us the road ended in a cross street, and there was a creature in the middle of the road! It looked sort of like a pig, but it was covered with bristly fur. Mom saw it, too. She said it was a javelina and that it was probably what had dug the hole we’d passed.
Mom and Dad didn’t have the camera with them, but here’s a picture of a javelina that we found online:
I got really excited about seeing the javelina - after all, it’s way bigger than a bunny - and even more excited when Mom and Dad kept walking toward where we’d seen it cross the road ahead of us.
When we reached the cross street, we stopped to look in the direction the javelina had gone - and there was a whole herd of them just a little way down the street! Mom and Dad counted 14 or 15 of them. That’s almost as many javelina as I have toes! And they had a few little baby javelina with them that looked a bit like little furry wind-up toys.
Apparently they weren’t magic javelina, because they didn’t disappear. They didn’t even run away like the bunnies do. They just milled around for a bit and then continued down the side of the street in single file, like a bristly pig parade.
I got sooooo excited. I really wanted to go after them, but Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me. Apparently javelina have big, sharp tusks and can be real mean, especially when there’s a whole herd of them. But oh how I wanted to get closer! I mean, there they were, a whole herd of critters to chase! It was just about the neatest thing I’ve seen since coming to the desert. And they smelled so good! Mom said even she could smell them, but then she said we had to go the other way, up the hill away from them.
I really, really didn’t want to leave, but Mom had my leash so I had to follow her. The funny thing is, Cooper didn’t seem to care about either the bunny or the javelina. What a strange hound he is. I guess he figured they couldn’t pet him or feed him, so why bother with them? I know that if BJ had come with us on the walk, she’d probably have been even more excited than I was. She’s a crazy hunting-girl.
I guess I was a little crazy, too. For quite a while after we left the javelina Mom had to keep reminding me to heel because I just wanted to go hunt them. Once we got far enough away from them, however, I remembered I was supposed to be heeling without Mom having to remind me all the time.
I sure hope we see more javelina on other walks. I’ll try to be a little better behaved next time, but I can’t really promise.
Sorry there weren’t more pictures today. I’ll try to remind Mom and Dad to start carrying the camera on walks. Maybe next time we’ll see a bobcat! The Greyhounds told me they saw one once just up the hill from our house. I’ll have to keep an eye out for one, and maybe we’ll get a picture. In the meantime, I promise to show you lots of pictures tomorrow when I tell you about the new rawhide bones we got…and a fun trick to play on your humans.
Until then, this is Sergei, signing off.
