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Clint Riese
Staff Writer
The scene might as well have been from a Hollywood hit. The rare wolf on the loose led a mob of police officers, animal caretakers and volunteers on a wild chase through backyards and across major thoroughfares. A news station helicopter swirled overhead as the exhausted animal was finally netted, tranquilized and sent back to her sisters in captivity.
Needless to say, it was far from business as usual for the staff of the Wildlife Science Center at 5463 W Broadway Ave. last week. But after about 80 hours of waiting and worrying, they welcomed home their three-year-old Mexican gray wolf Thursday morning. After passing a physical and having some blood drawn, the wolf joined her two sisters in the enclosure they had been intentionally released from.
“She recovered very well,” said WSC director Peggy Callahan. “She ate a lot, she drank a lot and she slept very hard, so that was what we figured. She was on the run for four days.”
The wolf was slightly dehydrated and underweight, but otherwise seemed no worse for wear. Besides concerns about her physical condition, WSC staff worried that the balance of the wolves’ social system had been thrown off. Despite being separated for days, though, the two that had been recovered soon after they were freed welcomed their sister back with little incident.
“It was like nothing,” Callahan said. “They kind of sniffed her, like ‘Where have you been? You’re late.’”
Intentionally Freed
The chain of events began early Sunday morning, when a WSC worker discovered the wolf cage pried open and empty. The main entrance gate had also been damaged. The staff was able to recover two of the three escapees near the center, but the third was nowhere to be found.
For the WSC, it was a first that staff hoped would never happen. Making matters worse, the sprung wolf is part of the Mexican Gray Wolf Recovery Program run by the federal government. At one point, just seven Mexican gray wolves remained in the world. WSC donates space to keep the three wolves, who came to the center in December 2007 from the Minnesota Zoo.
“She is a nationally, federally protected individual,” Callahan said. “That wolf is of great significance and great importance, so it was kind of the worst possible combination of things to have happen.”
As the wolf had never lived in the wild, WSC staff did not know what to expect, but did know she was vulnerable. So despite reservations, they decided to enlist the public’s help in locating the animal.
“One of the things that folks who liberate animals like this want is attention,” Callahan said. “They want publicity, it amps them up. So we really struggled with whether to go public. But the fact that she is so little and looks so coyote-like, we felt like we needed to do this for her safety.”
Reported sightings flowed in, and staffers spent the next few days reporting to several which turned out to be coyotes. On Tuesday night, they were able to identify the wolf in a cell phone picture taken near Little Coon Lake north of West Broadway Avenue. WSC workers and government trappers combed that area on Wednesday, but were thrown off by a call that came in from the New Brighton police at 5:45 Thursday morning.
New Brighton Department of Public Safety had received one report of a sighting on Wednesday night and one in the early morning hours of Thursday. Then at 4:45, an officer spotted the wolf by Long Lake Road, a major thoroughfare. The department had heard of the missing wolf and contacted WSC.
Callahan was skeptical and sent animal care coordinator Matt Row to verify the identity.
“But to have this call come in Thursday morning at 5:45 saying she was in New Brighton. I didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe it was her at all.”
According to New Brighton public safety director Bob Jacobson, the surprise was mutual.
“We didn’t expect anything like that to come roaming through New Brighton,” he said.
The situation played right into the hands of those tracking the wolf. Not only could staff and all the contacts Callahan could get a hold of respond, but they had the full support of a police department at their disposal.
The group followed the wolf through neighborhoods – where a tranquilizer dart malfunctioned and bounced off the wolf without injecting – and onto Long Lake, where the chase ensued with six-wheelers from the police department.
Finally, the weary, wayward animal found itself boxed in along a fence on the south end of Long Lake Regional Park, just north of Interstate 694. The chasers formed a human wall and guided the wolf towards the most experienced handlers. They netted her and hand-injected a tranquilizer.
Staffers were able to deduce that the wolf stuck to roads and frozen paths and stayed out of the deep snow. The journey must have included crossing Highway 10 at some point.
Callahan feels that without the aid from the New Brighton police and the level of public awareness, the outcome may have been different.
“I’m really pleased with how much attention she’s got and that’s the reason she was alive,” Callahan said.
Back at Center
On Friday, all three wolf sisters were back to laying low in their enclosure.
“It’s great,” Callahan said. “While she was gone, the other two were stressed the whole time. They never stopped pacing.”
The WSC is taking measures to ramp up security. Callahan is convinced that the break-in was the work of animal activists.
“It was very targeted,” she said. “You’d have to know exactly where you were going. You would have to cased it and really figured out what you were doing...Whatever went on here, we certainly don’t need a repeat of this.”
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