A 45-year-old tourist from Holland painfully found out just how wild the Sonoran Desert can be — even in the confines of a museum.
Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum officials made the "extremely rare" decision to close the museum all day Saturday after a wild javelina breached the grounds Friday and bit the man, who ended up in surgery for wounds to his right calf and hand.
Teams of museum and Arizona Game and Fish staff searched overnight Friday and throughout Saturday, but have not found the javelina, said Craig Ivanyi, the museum's associate executive director.
The museum is open today. Since the animal hasn't been found, officials say it's possible it left the grounds.
The Dutch visitor, whose name was not released, was bitten around noon Friday, after the javelina somehow got onto the museum grounds. He received initial medical care at the museum and then was flown to University Medical Center.
Apparently thinking the animal was part of an exhibit, the man unknowingly approached too close to the javelina, said Aninna Thornburg, an Arizona Game and Fish spokeswoman.
It was a non-provoked attack, though the javelina could have felt cornered, Thornburg said.
Incidents of javelinas biting people occur very rarely, maybe once or twice a year in Arizona, Thornburg said. There have been just two documented cases of rabies in javelinas in the state, she said.
Federal wildlife agents have taken over the search for the javelina, and it will be tested for rabies when caught. Thornburg said the chances are good of finding and identifying the javelina because it has a lot of blood on it from biting the visitor and because javelinas are habitual creatures that tend to roam the same area.
Because of the aggressive manner of the javelina, museum workers spread out to clear the grounds of all other visitors Friday as they began searching for the animal. Four Game and Fish specialists helped and recommended closing the museum for 24 hours, Ivanyi said.
The museum property has an 8-foot perimeter fence, and, though it's rare, animals can get in through the gates. A wild javelina was captured on the grounds last year near the javelina exhibit, the same area where Friday's attack occurred.
"Being in a natural desert area, pretty much anything that's in and around Tucson Mountain Park has the potential to get onto the grounds," Ivanyi said. "Once they make their way onto the grounds, as rare as it is, they tend to go and find their own kind."
The Desert Museum is open every day of the year, and closures are "extremely rare," Ivanyi said. Closures are always related to public safety and typically involve extreme weather. The last closure was during a microburst last summer.
"The entire surrounding desert has these same animals, so it's not like there's something on the museum grounds that would put people at risk that they wouldn't encounter just hiking in the desert," he said.
The museum, 2021 N. Kinney Road, has about 550,000 annual visitors.
