Farting he goes

The bush is hot and dry. Most of the wildlife is asleep. Not all. A strange creature crosses the empty river-bed. Tail in the air, chasing flies and indicating direction to the younger ones, the mother of three runs accross the sand, always watching out for predators, may the come from the sky or the riverbanks.

She looks proud, like a prom queen on the big night, her head tilted high and her hairy chin showing the way. Her tiny tusks springing from her lower jac gives her a ferocious look. Tiny for us but lethal to most predators. Only the males really get big, the females are about the size of a piglet. Single-lined, the four cousins of our pigs run for cover, the fresh shadow of the green northern bank of the river. There the grass is tender – or at least their mother told them so.

They do stink sometimes from all the mud-bathing and feces spreading. They are curious and excited animals, always running from point A to point B for no apparent reason. A line of orange or light-brown hair following the back-spine, a bony tail with a ridiculous tuft of hair, hooves that almost leave no trace on their paths, and those terrifying tusks that seem so big for such small animals. The young ones are taught how to behave like they were kings of this world, head high, muscles out and tail chasing the clouds, pacing fast, going around their kingdom with that look of grandeur in the eyes.

Farting it goes, the warthog, not caring about others. We might see an ugly and stinky animal but, confident in their superiority, they’ve kept running through the African wilderness for thousands of years of evolution and have remained the same : never dominated – “Hogs Hogs Hogs!”