Wild Boar Attacks Reported in Tsukuba!
By Avi Landau
You really never can tell what will happen in this life of ours.
Imagine this, a seventy year old man from a quiet hamlet (Kunimatsu) at the foot of Mt. Tsukuba gets on his bicycle on a cold but fine day and pedals along the RINRIN ROAD cycling path thinking of doing a little grocery shopping. Then at around 10:30, passing through Numata, he is suddenly knocked over by a blow from behind - and before he can even look up something is upon him – a ravenous wild boar gone berserk!
He grapples with the meter-long beast for 20 minutes (!) and in the process has his right thumb bitten clean off.
No, folks, this is not a folk-tale or the re-telling of some nightmare I`ve had. It`s something that actually happened here in Tsukuba on January 28, 2018.
About thirty minutes after that poor gentleman lost his thumb, another person, a seventy-three year old woman out talking a stroll was attacked and had her ring finger slightly injured.
This is a segment of the RINRIN ROAD just outside of Hojo. The boar attacks took place a few kilometers to the north.
I have previously written about the increase in Mt. Tsukuba`s boar population and the trouble they have been giving local farmers. I guess hunger – and the unusually cold weather we`ve been having has driven this one particular critter (if it was in fact the same boar involved in both attacks – separated by thirty minutes in time and about fifty meters in space) to man-eating (could it have contracted rabies??).
I would advice you to think twice about taking your kids to play around Mt. Tsukuba – and if you go around there as an able-bodied adult – take your baseball bat with you!
I happened to be near Mt. Tsukuba today and took a stroll in the fields and happened to chance upon this fence – made from the old wooden beams that used to make up the railroad tracks. I didn`t come across any boars – just a lot of pheasants!