Mom & Me Four Archive

...The Dailies in a post that covers the last several days, from November 2 - yesterday. Toward the end there's a note about my feelings about constant statting at this stage of my mother's life.
    I also wanted to bring more attention to javelina. In case some of my reader's didn't notice, in a comment to my last post on javelina, Granny J provided yet another site with several spectacular pictures of foraging javelina. Super pictures, really! The herd portrayed in these pictures, by the way, is about average size for such a group.
    A sobering note about javelina as prey: Maybe about three weeks ago, mid-evening, after dark, the cats and I heard some scuffling outside in our back yard, a high pitched squeal...some more scuffling...thinking that yet another javelina had managed to get stuck while trying to dig underneath our neighbor's-to-the-west fences, I decided to investigate. I exited our front door so the sound of the back arcadia door sliding wouldn't cause the javelina to struggle more...although I knew it would probably struggle when I approached it mid-predicament. As I headed toward the back I heard a loud rush of scuffling, what sounded life a loud huff, then silence. I shone a flashlight all around the back yard and saw nothing. Then, a faint rustle escaped from our oldest elm just behind our carport. I directed the flashlight up the trunk. In the tree I spotted two pairs of eyes glaring at me and below the eyes the black shape of what appeared to be an adult javelina carcass hanging lifelessly from the seat of two conjoining branches. Mountain lions, probably, cooperating in a felicitous fall dinner. Although I know we have mountain lions here, I've talked to more than a few neighbors who've spotted them, including the aforementioned next-door neighbor, their reality hadn't struck me until that night.
    I turned and left them to their dinner; and, not incidentally, vowed to be even more cautious about seeing to it that our cats not escape our house.