Presidio San Agustin del Tucson Museum

SUMMER VISITORS.

The Presidio Museum is currently open from 3 to 7 PM on Thursday through Saturdays. We will have an expended schedule in September.

We recently had a pair of off-hour visitors who wandered into the Museum, deciding to take a nap behind Soledad's Garden.

Click on the picture to get a larger image (photo by Dena Cowan).

The Javelina or Collared Peccary (Pecari tajacu) is a mammal found in North, Central, and South America. A Wikipedia page on this species can be found HERE. Javelinas are common in Tucson, but they were not always present. No bones from this species have been found at sites predating AD 1800. Archaeological excavations have found  a single bone at the Mission of San Agustin, dating to sometime in the early 1800s. This suggests that they expanded their range, moving north, perhaps a result of the extermination of wolves in the region. Newspaper accounts indicate they were present in the Catalina Mountains by 1880.

Javelinas are not closely related to pigs, although they have similar diets, eating anything they can find including cactus pads, mesquite beans, roots, lizards, and ornamental plants. They tend to live in herds. If you come across a group of javelina, be careful because they can be aggressive and they bite!

Luckily, the pair of sleep javelina at the Museum decided to wander away, perhaps coming back again when there is a docent available to explain the history of Tucson.