Tusk Talk: Warthog Round Up

A while back I did a little post about boars. Now at that time I didn't get too much into warthogs. Warthogs are exponentially more bad ass than boars being as they have tusks. Tusks make everything better.

Now if my life here comes to an end and I have to be reincarnated into the Suidae family I would do everything in my power to make myself a warthog. I imagine it would be something like this...


I spend my days roaming about the open grasslands of Africa in search of roots or grubs or such. Each afternoon I find a nice little watering hole where I drink and wash the dust from my tusks, however I usually prefer to have them coated in dirt and grim to deter poachers from making me into a mini grand piano.

The ground is scalding hot and I have to find some refuge. I think about digging a burrow, but that sounds like a lot of work and with the risk of heat exhaustion very real I decide to forgo the work for a little thievery. There is an aardvark no far away who seems to have spent the whole morning preparing his own burrow. I circle around for a few minutes, sizing up my potential foe. He seems like a pussy. I'm sure I could take him. Then I notice the children. He's a she!!! I realize what a bad idea this is and take off in search of an easier fight.

I find a shady little area just off the savanna to rest for a spell. Then suddenly out of nowhere a lion shows up. The snarling beast thinks of me as an easy target, little does he know that my tusks are buried only an inch deep. He moves in for the kill only to find that when he's inches from my jugular I'm ready to defend myself. I lunge towards the feline, my ivory tusks gleaming in the sun, and immediately take out his left eye. The cat is taken back a little bit, but not out entirely. He circles me once more and tries to come from behind. I'm not having any of it and take out his right eye with one well timed turn of the neck. He's blinded and lying in pain. I consider having mercy on my opponent, killing him now to end his suffering, not a chance. I casually trot away, leaving the lion to the vultures.

The battle leaves me tired and I have to find a drink. I roll up to the local watering hole and have a wonderful conversation with a Giraffe named Melba. After getting through all the standard small talk I find that she had a child not long ago who was an unfortunate victim of a lion attack. She describes the attacker to me and as it turns out it was the very same lion I'd just seriously wounded. I agree to show her where I left him.

When we arrive Melba immediately agrees that this is the same lion who took her young. She becomes overwhelmed with emotion. I do my best to calm her but in the end I can't hold her back. She begins to kick the lion repeatedly, screaming and crying all the while. Every animals within a mile came running to see the spectacle, lucky for us this was a lone hunter and no other predators came to witness the beating. A family of elephants arrive and are horrified by what they see. Just as they move in to break it up Melba raises a hoof high in the air and crushes the lion's skull with ease. A small bit of brain lands in front of me. I smell it before walking away.

It's all just another day as a warthog...

Tusk Talk: The Unicorn of the Sea

I was boning up on my tusk knowledge and ran across a rather prime piece of ivory. Turns out that Poland's Prime Minister answers to the name Tusk. A fine name for a fine fellow. I was going to make this whole post about him, but than I remembered the marvelous tusked creature, the narwhal.

If I'm ever mutated into some sort of whale I would most definitely choose the Narwhal. How majestic they are! They swim about the arctic seas in search of food without a care in the world, slicing through the water with their magnificent tusk. The tusk, which is actually an elongated tooth that grows through the lip, is most commonly found on males, however females have been known to sport the ivory as well. In some very rare cases they've also been known to grow double tusks! I'd spend all my days searching the seas for a double tusked beauty to bear my children in hopes that they too would be blessed.

At times they are known to engage in an act known as "tusking" where the males gather together and rub their tusks against each other. At first this may seem slightly homo-erotic but in truth its far from it. They do this in order to establish dominance over each other in order to ensure they are rewarded with the best female mate. Now if I were a narwhal I wouldn't rub my tusk up on another dudes. I'd more likely just lunge at him and hope that my tusk pierces my opponent in the heart or lungs. Survival of the fittest.

Aren't Narwhals grand? If not for the reasons stated above, than because they make a brief, but very satisfying, cameo in the hit song "Rock Lobster" by the B-52s.

Tusk Talk

I wish that I had a pair of tusks. Huge ones. I'd make people bask in their majesty and power. I'd walk around town barking and threatening to crush people with them, deep down knowing I'd never follow through. I'd go to bars and show them off to all the ladies, have them polished and waxed so they always looked their best. It'd be amazing.

Only down side is that I'd probably have a problem with poachers. People would always be trying to kill me on the bus so that they could take my precious tusks. I wouldn't let em though. I'd gore them to death and I'd be right to do so.

I wonder if I can find a modern day Dr. Moreau to make this happen for me.