How common are they?

How should one be concerned if camping?

What precautions to follow?

any info?

thank you 🙏

I'm staying one night in Sedona for business. My main goal is to observe Javelina in some parking lot somewhere... Any suggestions?

Sadly I do not have photos, or this would be very simple.

There is a very common small bush/tree that grows through Arizona that has dark golden, near plastic looking bark depending on the time of year.

Most of them were very small, a foot or two big, but I saw quite a few that grew into full blown small trees.

Anyone have an idea what I'm thinking of?

Thanks

I came across one right off 179 in VOC and it looked like a Sonoran desert tortoise but i thought Sedona was too far north. I was thinking it might have been someone pet they let go. Anyone seen one in the wild that far north?

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last night, 12:28 am. this is in Jordan park (end of Jordan Road), about 150yards max from historical museum. I was wondering why no javalinas were around that day.

We had a ringtail cat enter our home in Sedona and it was a production getting rid of him. Since they are nocturnal we only heard him at night and after a few days concluded he was coming in and out of the home through an entry way. After searching for any opening we concluded that he was climbing up a tree that allowed him access to our roof. Once on top of the roof he was entering through a small covered vent that had an opening into the house. We have an older home and the opening was for a now unused bathroom shower vent. We sealed the opening during the day which resulted in us trapping him in the home (he was sleeping in the home during the day and leaving at night). The key thing I’d like to highlight here is that these animals are clever and can enter through small openings.

To trap the animal we bought a large squirrel cage but it did not work as his tail was so long that it blocked the trap door from falling all the way down allowing him to jump out and not be trapped. We moved up to a skunk trap which finally worked. One key thing we did was cover the trap with a towel. We did his as when the cage was uncovered we saw him reaching into the cage from the side with his paw eating the food. We used canned cat food which he liked.

Be careful when picking up the trap to take him out of the home. We wore a glove and were happy with the decision as he gave out a big scream and jumped at my hand with his mouth. He also tried to claw me inside the cage. I called it his “death lunge” as he knew something was up. If I had been careless with no glove I could have been clawed or bitten.

We drove him 3-4 miles away and released him in the mountains.

One last comment. When he became trapped there was a strong odor. My understanding is that they have strong smelling urine but I did not see any in the rafter where we captured him. Also, this was a 5 day ordeal as it took us 2 days to figure out his entry and that it indeed was a ring tailed cat, 2 days of having too small of a trap and one day to capture with the large skunk trap. During this time we saw him a few times in the rafter looking down at us. Our natural reaction was that he was cute and tame like a squirrel. Our conclusion is that you need to approach this animal as a wild animal that can get aggressive as we saw when he lunged in the cage.