The Hog

Despite my hesitance and lack of running shoes, Jordan manages to convince me that I should go on a run with him. Twenty minutes later we are pounding the red earth at a reasonable pace, trying to decide how far and where to go, when across a rice paddy style ditch a sight that I never thought I would see greets me.

There needs to be a word to describe the feeling that comes to a man when he unexpectedly sees an animal he knew existed but was mentally unprepared to see. French is too smooth for such a word, German too rough, Italian... Perhaps the Italians have one, something with an "o" on the end. I don't know it, but that is exactly the sensation I have when I see my first warthog. 

It is a strangely noble creature, and smaller than I thought it would be.

 

Eager to get a closer look, but wary of the dangers of disturbing creatures with tusks, we cautiously approached the beast.

 

And a beast it was. Warthogs aren’t nearly as fat as Disney led me to believe. Our warthog was thick, and bristling with hairs, it moved smartly on small legs and used it’s tusks to help it rip up bushes and shrubs to eat. It eyed our approach with the practiced caution of an animal used to the presence of humans, unsurprising given its proximity to the hotel and science station we were currently lodging in.

 

It was possibly the first animal that I’d seen in nature that I felt the true desire to hunt. Not with a gun, guns are not suited to the personal communion I wanted to have with the beast. I wanted to hunt it with a spear, or a knife. I wanted to get dirty, to challenge it in close combat. It was a strange, seemingly insane urge, but I now understand the hunter’s refrain “I wanted to hunt it because I respect it”.

We keep our distance and eventually the tusked animal made it's way into the undergrowth, disappearing save for the movement of the brush. 

Jordan and I look at each other. "Aren't you glad you came running?" 

-Doug