Here's a trade secret for you: News organizations only write about viral internet videos as an excuse to post the videos themselves. In this case, though, the footage and the story behind it were pure Tucson — and so was the animal friendly reaction to it.
— Henry Brean
Damion Alexander captured a 17-second clip of the running javelina on Feb. 21.
A certain viral cellphone video from Tucson continues to spread across the internet like, well, swine flu.
Since it first hit the web a week ago, the now-famous running javelina has spawned international news reports and parody Twitter accounts that have gone viral themselves.
Tucson real estate agent Damion Alexander captured the 17-second clip on Feb. 21 as he rode in the passenger seat of a client’s car, on the way to look at a house.
The video follows an adult javelina as it bounds at surprising speed across the landscaped entryway of the Los Portales Apartments complex on Prudence Road just north of East 22nd Street.
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Alexander posted the footage on his real estate company’s Facebook page the next day, and it took off from there.
“It came in from all directions at once,” said Alexander, who is also a major Tucson cycling advocate and a self-described wildlife enthusiast. “When your 18-year-old daughter tells you it’s gone viral, then it’s official.”
The footage has now appeared on SportsCenter and MSNBC.
Alexander said an uncle in Colorado called to tell him he’d seen it on the nightly news there.
It has also been liked and shared on social media tens of thousands of times, prompting clickbait national media stories from everyone from Time to The New York Times.
Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@tucson.com or 520-573 4283. On Twitter: @RefriedBrean
Henry Brean
Reporter
