Mexico’s Wild Hogs, or Peccary, Run From Nothing Under the Sun.
    The most vicious and fearless of the brute creation is the peccary or wild hog of Mexico. This animal seems utterly devoid of the emotion of fear. I have never seen it turn a hair’s breadth out of its path for any living thing, says a writer. Man is its special betenoire. It displays an intelligence in fighting the human strangely at variance with its apparently complete lack of any mental attributes, save the very lowest order of instinct. They are rarely found singly, but go in droves of from a hundred to thousands. Their ability to scent men is particularly marked. I have known a drove of them to scent a man a mile off and strike as straight for him as the arrow flies. There is no use to try to frighten them with guns. The cannonading of a full battery would have no more effect on them than the popping of a fire cracker. The only thing to do when they are after you is to run away from them as fast as a horse can carry you. And then there is no certainty that they won’t catch you. They are nearly as swift as a horse, and their endurance is as great as their viciousness.
    A friend of mine encountered a drove of them in a wild part of Mexico a few years ago, and his escape was miraculous. He very foolishly shot and wounded a number of them. Then he took refuge in a tree. The peccaries kept him in the tree all day and through the night. They circled around the tree, grunting and squealing their delight at the prospect of a feast. He soon exhausted his ammunition, and brought down a peccary at each fire. But this had no terrors for the beasts. Along came morning the brutes began the eat the ones he had killed, and when thus satified the cravings of their stomachs they formed in line and trotted off. If they had not had some of their own number to devour, they would have guarded that tree until my friend, through sheer exhaustion, dropped from his perch and allowed them to make a meal of him. The wild cats and tigers that infest the Mexican wilds, flee from the peccaries with instinctive fear, and even rattlesnakes keep out of their path.
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