The Golden-Bristled Boar: Last Ferocious Beast of the Forest

TWELVE: Beautiful Monsters Back Home

Chapter Twelve Beautiful Monsters Back Home Z ooming in on a satellite image of Matagorda, Texas, you see a complex convergence of water systems. The Colorado River,nottobeconfusedwiththewesternriverwiththesame name,windsroughlysouth,skirtingtheSouthwestTexasNuclearGenerating Station and its reservoir for the pressurized water reactors. The river then bends around the small gridlike town of Matagorda itself before finally culminating in an alluvial fan in Matagorda Bay. From space, the fan looks more like a green upside-down tree with swirls of yellow silt for branches. Before arriving in the bay, the river transects the busy Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, trafficked by enormous barges transporting petroleum and chemical products. These barges pass through two locks on either side of a navigation channel that allows direct access from the river to the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The channel cuts through a narrow strip of shrubby land flanked by a system of bayous filled with crab traps: more than thirty miles of bay lie on one side of it and twenty on the other. At the mouth of the channel there is a state park and nature center, and two concrete jetties extending about a mile into the gulf. On the sand flats near the east jetty and the riverbank, I spent one Halloween night in what turned out, to my complete surprise , to be perfect wild-hog country. My friend Bill Montgomery and I had talked for years about fishing for speckled trout and red drum together, a proposed outing mildly 122 • the golden-bristled boar complicated by our living on separate continents. However, we managed to escape for two autumn days while I was visiting Texas. Based on Texas Parks and Wildlife fishing reports and Bill’s judgment, we agreedonMatagordaatthelastminute.Asidefrombeingagifted artist and naturalist, Bill is a passionate fisherman. Our timing was uncanny as I arrived in my small Kia rental car from Houston Airport directly behind Bill’s camper, which was trailing an aluminum sled boat. The east side of the channel is lined with houses on stilts and docks fitted out with high-powered lamps for attracting fish. The western bank is protected land, a part of the Coastal Barrier Resource System. Its distinguishing feature is the canebrake, shrubs, and reeds from which Matagorda derives its name: “fat brush” in Spanish. As soon as we launched the boat at a public ramp between a stand of common reed and a bait shack next to the Reef Lounge, a small, black wild pig emerged from the dense underbrush on the far bank and stood beside a small, dilapidated dock. The bank was heavily churned up and excavated in parts, with several wallows at the water’s edge. The first pig was soon followed by three more, all about the size of those I’d seen in Corsica and Sardinia. Boars began arriving via hidden paths, and Bill and I counted fourteen wild hogs grouping on the shore. A very large male appeared and headed straight for the well-used wallow on the riverbank, trailing several smaller wild pigs. The boar, light khaki color, turned broadside to us and lowered himself into the river mud. The group had all the features of European wild boar: long snouts, furry erect ears, coarse, bristled hair down the spine, and straight tail with tuft. The large male had small tusks. But their torsos were decidedly more cylindrical, with less muscular bulk about the shoulders, a morphology indicating that they were common Texas feral hogs with a representationofEuropeanwildboarintheirgenes.Whiletheyseemed habituated to human commerce on the channel, they were cautious enough to melt back into the shrubbery as we approached their shore. Billwasconvincedtheywerebeingfedinpreparationforhunting.Why else would they make themselves so evident? beautiful monsters back home • 123 The wild pigs are a part of an elaborate ecosystem. At first, Matagorda gives the impression of an austere, almost grim landscape: dead flat with grayish silted waterways and reed-filled marshes extending as far as you can see. But it doesn’t take long to realize that the area is teeming with wildlife. Within an hour, pelicans, kingfishers, curlews, plovers, and falcons may all appear. The area is on the migratory route of numerous bird species. There are raccoons, coyotes, and alligators on the banks. Blue crabs scavenge the murky shallows. Even a porpoise approached us on the river. Later that night, we set up camp near the mouth of the channel and putoutfishinglinesonastarlessHalloweennight.Twopickupsarrived carrying high-spirited groups...