animals, Art, Mysteries, Travel

Helping the Javelina

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This is the last post about Nashville.  I swear.

When I did the blog last year about Henrietta (my stuffed javelina) going to Madison, it was kinda funny and I enjoyed it.  So I thought it would be fun to do it again on my trip to Nashville.  What I didn’t expect was that others would take on the cloak of silliness with me.

My friend Pat was absolutely obsessed with getting a photo of Henrietta wherever we went – zoo, Strawberry Café lunch, shopping, pizza place, the winery.  You’ve already seen the photos at the Goo Goo Cluster store and the Moonshine distillery and the breakfast place.  But she wasn’t the only one concerned that I get a good photo with Henrietta. 

A complete stranger at the zoo volunteered to take a photo of me and Henrietta with some flamingos that we out doing “meet & greet”.  Is demurred, not too sure how close I wanted to get to a huge (they are much bigger up close than you think) strange bird.

The woman working the bookstore at the Belmont Estate also noticed Henrietta in my bag and asked about her.  We were waiting for our tour to start so Pat was happy to go on and on about all the places that we had taken Henrietta over the past couple of days.  The woman got all excited and led us to a spot we would never have seen on our own… under a staircase on the second floor of the mansion.  There was a small statue of a pig, complete with a red bow.  This was a photo I couldn’t resist. 

Although it’s been fun, I’m not sure I need to keep it up.  I will probably take her to Tucson in March; it is after all her birthplace (my friend purchased her for me while I was there last year) but I’m not sure she will go to St. Louis with me this month.

Do you take selfies when you travel?

51 thoughts on “Helping the Javelina”

  2. We went to a park near Tucson AZ where Javelinas are said to roam. Elevated boardwalks. Scrub brush. Sandy soil. Not a pig in sight. Elderly ladies peering everywhere, hoping to see one.

    I faced away from our fellow tourists to perform a fairly convincing pig snort. The ladies tread the boards with such excitement I almost felt guilty.

    They tittered, “I hear them! Where are they?”

    My wife still tells the story from time to time.

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    2. Having grown up in Iowa near farms and farm people, there were many peers who took great pride in their various animal imitations. This included pigs and cows, but the very best one was the chicken imitation at the back of the band bus, accomplished by a very skilled trumpet player. He had the sounds, but also the full body movements. So entertaining.

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  3. I have some thoughts about selfies. The fact that we can now take photos of ourselves and post them on the internet for all the world to see is a bit unsettling for me. I dislike photos of myself and I try to avoid them, so no selfies. I do enjoy your photos of Henrietta. She’s a well-traveled javelin who helps you meet people and go places you wouldn’t have gone without her. She makes people smile and I think that’s a great thing in such a complex world.

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    1. It occurs to me that having a Henrietta would be a congenial substitute for photographing oneself in vacation locations—a way to document sites and the experience with a sort of avatar.

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  4. I agree about posting selfies, Krista. Is it an ego thing, like, “Hey, dig me. Aren’t I having a great time?” Either that or we do it just because we can. And that’s a sad commentary on a lot of activities, events, behaviors, and excesses. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should.

    Chris

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  5. On rare occasions, I’ll take a selfie but I think I’ve only posted one or two on the internet. Those were most likely put on my author blog or website so my “fans” are reassured that I’m a real person. 😉

    Chris in Owatonna

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  6. No seflies – I believe my dumb phone is also a camera, but have not explored this capability. When people visit here, we always try to get a group photo..
    A cousin just asked me for a current photo of Husband and me. I had a hard time finding anything, so I probably should remedy that, at least, for such requests.

    I did see a javelina when on a college retreat outside Phoenix; they’re bigger than I’d imagined.

    It is fun to imagine you, VS, with this mascot – apparently it doesn’t have to be a live animal that will get you connected with the world.

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        2. That was supposed to be a link to an “emotional support” vest on Amazon in size XXXS. I don’t know why Kindle got involved.

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        3. Amazon gets involved many places I do not want them. I was at one time signed up for their Prime service when I did not want it by a mysterious, unethical process. Getting rid of it was a trial.

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  7. Rise and Shine,Baboons,

    I do take a few selfies meant for use on the annual Holiday Card, or entertaining a few friends of family. I rarely post these anywhere. The javelina is a worthy substitute that reminds me of the traveling pants fad from years ago.

    Real javelinas are a trial to live with. We encountered the often while staying in AZ for the winters. They ripped up the ground, attacked dogs, and they attacked their own images reflected by patio sliding doors. They were also quite a danger to canines. We saw a few of them with the impressive ridge of hair on their spines. The babies were cute for about 10 minutes. I brought back an Arizona javelina tusk that now lives downstairs in the family room. It is a fearsome thing.

    VS, your stuffed toy is much cuter.

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  8. The Cesky Terrier is often employed in Europe to roust wild pigs out of their hiding places and toward the hunters. Kyrill would have a great time dismembering Henrietta.

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  9. The only photos I post are those of our dog on the Cesky America site. Yesterday it was of Kyrill supervising the straining of meat stock made from goat shanks, lamb leg bones, and a beef shank. We put a few morsels of meat in with his kibble. The goat meat is really fatty. Kyrill was almost long enough to put his snout on the counter while the broth was being strained.

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  10. Your experience traveling with Henrietta, vs, reminds me of a trip to Mexico when I had brought along a Flat Stanley that belonged to a child of a friend. This was roughly thirty years ago, so no cell phone was involved, but I have photos of Flat Stanley dipping his toes in the Sea of Cortez, and digging clams in the sand. Flat Stanley was a tool that allowed school children to tell their classmates of experiences their Flat Stanleys had had. Flat Stanley also brought back various sea shells, sand dollars, and other interesting stuff you can find on a Mexican beach.

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  12. When we travelled to Scotland back in 1990, one of the things I packed was an inflatable “sea monster”—a ring beach toy with a sea monster head sticking up.

    When we made it to Castle Urquhart, at the head of Loch Ness, it happened the castle was closed for some repair work. But below the castle wall on the shore of the loch we unfurled our cunning plan. I inflated the beach toy and readied my camera to capture our very own Nessie sighting.

    We tied a string to the inflatable so as to be able to retrieve it before it got too far out. Unfortunately the wind that day was blowing in toward shore and so, try as we might, we couldn’t get the putative sea monster more than a few feet out. After many minutes of tossing it out and having it land at our feet, we discovered a clutch of workmen had gathered above us on the wall, watching the wacky tourists with amusement.

    Leaving the castle grounds I stuffed our Nessie into a trash receptacle.

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  13. I don’t do selfies, and honestly I have a hard time understanding the charm of it. But clearly I must be missing something, considering how popular it is, especially among young women.

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  15. i do a selfie each time i screw up a photograph i intend to take where i have the phone accidentally finding me there instead of my intended subject
    it documents that i can ce an airhead under various circumstances and situations
    it documents that it is not only possible but guaranteed that i will perform a repeat performance in the not too distant future

    over the years i have done this in enough locations and states of disarray that the unkempt windblown versions are among my favorites
    variations on a beard or hairstyle are a given

    group photos at get together are valued and although quality often sucks the soul comes shining through

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  16. I don’t take many selfies – my arms are too short to get a decent one. I usually just get part of my face in the selfie (on purpose). The friends who I do much of my traveling with like to do group selfies. If I am going to be in a photo, I definitely want someone else to be the photographer.

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  17. I shouldn’t like javelinas in my garden. I understand the are very destructive to agriculture in Texas and the Southwest. Ordered garden seeds today from companies on each coast and some from in between. For a first, we are not growing tomatoes this summer. I have quarts and quarts of canned tomatoes from last year. Concentrating on eggplants, peppers, and herbs, along with the usual peas, chard, spinach, green beans, shell out beans, butternuts, and canteloupes.

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      1. I will have peppers and squash and cucumbers and beans for our food pantry. We are the only ones who give edible pod peas and peppers for the food pantry.

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      2. The veggie beds in our church garden are shallow raised beds good for peas, beans, bush cucumbers, and spinach. They are too shallow for tomatoes. There are meandering pathways of flowers, however, where I plan to plant butternut squash and canteloupes for the food pantry.

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    2. If I could grow only one thing, it would be the tomatoes, and forget about the other stuff. Most vegetables can be readily bought at reasonable prices, but there is nothing like a fresh tomato from your own garden.

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    3. Feral hogs are responsible for a lot agricultural damage in Texas and the southeastern US. The feral hogs are an invasive species descendant from European domesticated hogs, they are not javelinas (which are different species). Javelinas cause far less problems.

      Within the past few weeks I’ve read several newspaper articles about the extreme measures, especially in Texas, to eradicate them. According to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, an estimated 6.9 million feral hogs roamed the United States in 2016 – with more than one-third of that population, 2.6 million hogs, living in Texas.

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      2. can’t they just put them on a bus and ship them off to europe
        maybe they’d need to charter a plane capable of shipping multiple bus loads of hogs back to where they belong

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  18. If I had had a cell phone camera when I was a teenager, I’d probably have more photos of myself, but in those days you had to actually go out and buy a roll of film and put it in a camera and take it to the drugstore to have it developed.

    How times have changed.

    I have had to come up with photos for work purposes, an online profile photo, and it’s really hard. I wasn’t photogenic when I was young, and certainly am not now.

    I prefer the ostrich photo.

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    1. As an alternative to buying film for your own camera and all that, don’t forget we had the alternative of those charming photo booths. I think I have a few of those photos stashed around here in a shoe box, though they are probably pretty faded by now.

      How is the ostrich received on a CV?

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