Primal fear -- being attacked in the night by a creature that you cannot really see... while no real attack took place-- last evening about 10:15 PM, I was out with my wife walking our dogs when they began pulling like crazy and barking.
All of a sudden up from the wash running across the street toward us was this huge (to my eyes) javelina. It was dark and while I had a small flashlight it was hard to see the animal. The "boys" were pulling like crazy to get to it. It stood its ground even when I yelled at it and threw a handful of the small pebbles I could find. It even began coming across the street towards us. I was doing my best to handle one of the dogs, keep the flashlight on the javelina, and look about for something more than a pebble to throw at the animal to scare it away. Nothing available!!Pulling the dogs toward home (we were about a block away) the javelina kept following us...my wife saw a smaller one joining the larger one. At this point I took both dogs - a real handful of two 55 lbs of dogs trying to get to the javelina-- and pulled them toward home. Sharon took the flashlight to keep an eye on the beasts following us. The followed us for nearly half a block while I was pulling with all my strength to keep the dogs under control -- they wanted to attack the javelina so badly but dogs have been badly mauled by these "not pigs" but a pig-like animals native to the Western Hemisphere.
The javelina finally gave up and wandered off the street and I guess back down to the wash...their normal avenue of movement. We have a wash on both sides and our neighbors have told us of bobcats in addition to the javelina using this "street" to move about.
We did get to our house and got the boys inside and safe -- all of us but a little excited after our adventure. It was certainly the first time I had seen one in the wild and the first time I had felt frightened since an encounter with a black bear way back in 1975 in a campground in Canada.
So while totally safe we will be walking Snoopy and Lucky closer to home from now on.
