Tuesday, January 01, 2008

It IS still the year of the PIG!

What was that?
10:30 pm last night I was making samples sitting right at the living room window when I heard some rumbling and clanking outside our back door. I could hardly see anything because I was having to look down the the side of the house in the pitch dark. I could barely make out a figure among the patio chairs. I yelled for Gary to turn on the patio lights.
I thought I spied a stray dog. But NOOOOOOOO....it was the marauding wild pigs....Javelinas or Collared Peccaries. Five of them. We have lived in our house for 3 years and for all of those 3 years I have been trying to take a photo of these pigs. They usually come in the middle of the night and we've actually gotten up at 3:00 in the morning to find them mucking about but I never have my camera with me. The fact that they showed up so early was shocking. The fact they came right up to the window while we had full lights on in the house was unbelievable. They were searching for food but all they found was an empty plastic bag.
There were four large ones--like the size of medium 60 lb dog and this one small guy. They come from the nearby desert preserve and rummage around the neighborhood. They are quite stinky and you can usually smell if they have been in your yard. They haven't visited us in a long time since we got smart and secured our garbage can so they can't tip it over. It is really an annoying deal to be running out the door in the morning and find your garbage strewn all over yours and the neighbor's front yard. So after about 10 times of that Gary figured out a way to secure the trash receptacle to the house so they leave it alone.

They actually came right up to the glass but if we made the slightest move, they would run away. But they came back a couple of different times. I couldn't get a photo of all 5 together--this one has 3 of them.
No food to be found so then they were off to the next house.