By Emma Hesselsweet | November 21, 2021
We wandered away from the ticket booth, at saguaro national park. My eyes did too, and they finally focused on the map of the museum my brother had grabbed. I glanced at it, thought, and then spoke. This is a pretty big museum, I pointed out, noticing the winding long edges of the map. That’s true, my mom acknowledged. Lots of exhibits, and a couple short hikes too. We found a rock wall, and my mom sat down, so me and graham followed suit. We sat, and stared over my mom’s shoulder to put in our thoughts on where to go. Graham, of course, chose reptiles and amphibians, and I chose ocelots, bobcats, and javelinas.
For those of you who don’t know, javelinas are piglike, although at the same time, park rangers say they are nowhere near being a pig. They are gray, and probably 70-100 pounds. Anyway, we decided to go to reptiles and amphibians first. It was in an enclosed room, adobe, but it had no door. It was pretty dark in there as well. My eyes took a moment to adjust to its new light and surroundings, then it quickly spotted snakes, and lizards.
We took pictures, looked, and watched and listened, and used all our five senses, basically, to enjoy the animals. They hid, they basked, and they swam. It was almost like they got stage fright when any human came close, hoping to see something. Either they scurried into a sandy burrow, hid under a rocky outcropping, or simply ran away. Bad experiences in captivity, Ithought, feeling a pang of sympathy when I glanced at someone tapping on the glass or yelling, shaking the world with delight, when they spotted another animal. We wandered out sneaking last glances at our favorite animals. When we got back into the sun, my eyes had to adjust for the second time. We decided to wander down to my chosen exhibit next, and we saw bobcats, ocelots, a gray fox, but we were lucky enough to see FIVE javelinas dozing in the shade beneath a green trunked tree. FIVE! And it was the best thing I saw that day.
The Peace of Wild Things 