A Wart Hog by Any Other Name

They call them "lawnmowers" as they graze the lawn in from of my hut here at Bonamanzi Game Reserve.

Running through the bush with tails erect like whip antennas my new friend J.J. Bezuidenhout calls them "go carts" referring to those radio controlled mini off-road vehicles that zip through dirt trackers driven by enthusiastic hobbyists.

I know them as "wart hogs."

If an elephant is an animal created by committee, and a Pug is the result of a dog not stopping as quickly as the truck it was chasing, somehow I can't help but image that a wart hog is a sort of walking morality tale. I can just see wart hogs as the winning entry in a contest among the lesser gods titled "Invent the Animal You Would Least Like to be Reincarnated as."

I am not certain of the signficance of the fact that, while others on our safari can claim to be the first to have spotted rhinos (both White and the dangerous Black species), zebras, kudu, inyala, hyena, and leopard my claim to fame is having been the one to spot the first wart hog.

Wart hogs - including the sow who sleeps on my porch here at Bonamanzi - provide me with a major portion of my minimimun daily humor requirement.