What it means
Javelina is the local word for the collared peccary, and the first thing every resident learns to say about it is that it is not a pig. It looks like one: a bristly, gray-black, barrel-shaped animal about 19 inches at the shoulder, 40 to 60 pounds, with a pale collar of hair around the neck and a snout built for rooting. It even smells like one, or worse, because a gland on its lower back leaks a skunky musk the herd uses to recognize each other. But peccaries are their own family, Tayassuidae, native to the Americas and separated from true pigs by tens of millions of years. Locals enjoy correcting visitors on this point more than the point deserves.
You will hear the word from a neighbor at dusk (“the javelina got the hose line again”) and from anyone who has walked a dog north of Shea at the wrong hour. The desert wildlife field guide ranks them well below bees on the worry list; the dogs guide is where the real caution lives.
Where you’ll meet it
The foothill neighborhoods from McCormick Ranch north, thickest around Troon, DC Ranch and the washes feeding the Preserve; the grounds of the Boulders, where the herds are practically staff; and any yard with fallen citrus, birdseed or a leaking drip line. Dusk and dawn, year round, with more daytime sightings in cold weather.
Where the word came from
The word is Spanish. Jabalina is the feminine of jabalí, wild boar, which Spanish speakers in Mexico applied to the pig-shaped animal they met in the New World, the same way they named the mountain lion león. Anglo Arizona kept the Spanish word and spelled it with a j that it pronounces like an h, so the standard local pronunciation is hah-veh-LEE-nah. Say it with a hard j and you have announced your arrival date.
The animal’s story is older. Peccaries evolved in the Americas, and the collared peccary, Pecari tajacu, ranges from the Southwest to northern Argentina. Arizona is the northern edge: the species is common across the southern and central state, including the desert fringe of Phoenix, with wanderers as far north as Flagstaff. They travel in herds of two to more than twenty, average six to nine, and depend on each other for feeding, bedding and defense; a javelina moved to another herd’s territory is rarely accepted, which is why Arizona Game and Fish calls relocation a death sentence.
The Scottsdale version of the story is the suburb. Javelina eat prickly pear pads and fruit, agave hearts, mesquite beans, bulbs and grubs. North Scottsdale’s landscaping, irrigation and birdseed amount to a buffet, and the washes developers left as drainage are highways. The herds rooting through yards along Happy Valley Road are doing what they did when the land was open, in the same places.
What it is not
Not a pig, not a feral hog, and not a wild boar. Arizona has feral pigs in a few places, but a bristly gray animal in a Scottsdale wash with a pale collar and a herd behind it is a javelina. It is also not aggressive by temperament; a javelina that seems to charge is often a nearsighted animal bolting toward what it thinks is cover.
The fine print
Javelina are classified as big-game animals under Arizona law: a homeowner may use reasonable measures to protect property but may not capture, injure or kill one outside a permitted hunt. Game and Fish’s Mesa office handles complaints, and its brochure is blunt about the limits: darting is dangerous, trapping rarely works, and an aggressive animal that is removed is destroyed, not relocated.
The law that matters most to residents is the feeding ban. Intentionally or recklessly feeding wildlife in Maricopa or Pima County is illegal, with a fine of up to $300, and birds and tree squirrels are the only exemptions. Game and Fish says nearly every javelina attack on a person traces back to deliberate feeding, because fed animals lose their wariness and begin to treat people as competition for food. Report feeding to the department’s Operation Game Thief line.
The dog problem is physics. A javelina reads a dog as a coyote, its ancestral predator, and when it cannot escape it fights with canine teeth that Game and Fish describes as capable of severe puncture wounds. Keep the dog leashed, leave when you see a herd, pick up a small dog if one charges, and fight back if an animal is actually on the dog or on you. The Boulders and the Carefree resorts post exactly this advice.
Fencing works where everything else fails: a four-foot wall around the patio and garden, poultry wire over bulb beds, an electric fence where a wall is not an option. The Preserve’s 2011 to 2013 wildlife survey counted collared peccary among 25 documented mammal species; the herds are a fixture, not an invasion, and the first-year guide treats them accordingly.