The article excerpted below can be read in full at the Minneapolis-St. Paul StarTribune website.
Rise of wolves putting Minnesota pets at risk
Complaints - and fears - about attacks on dogs are increasing along with wolf numbers in northern Minnesota.
By Doug Smith, Star Tribune
Last update: August 24, 2009 - 12:29 PM
When Bruce Mell left the Twin Cities and retired to a lakeside cabin in northern Minnesota two years ago, he took along his canine companion, Sadie.
"She and I retired together," Mell, who is 61 and divorced, said of the 80-pound black Lab-mix he had rescued from an animal shelter. "We've been together for 10 years. Every morning when I got up to fix coffee and some breakfast, I'd let her outside. She never went far, just stayed around the yard."
But one recent morning, Mell went out to tinker with equipment on his 5 acres in the woods near Hill City and immediately noticed something was wrong.
"No dog," he said. "At first I didn't think much of it, but then I started to worry."
Mell found Sadie's remains in the woods not far from his cabin. Wolves had killed and eaten her.
"There was almost nothing left: The end of her tail, a bit of rib cage and her collar," he said. "Your heart just drops. Me and her were pretty tight."
Sadie is among seven dogs federal officials have confirmed were killed by wolves so far this year in Minnesota -- part of a recent spate of dog-wolf encounters and an overall increase in wolf attacks on domestic animals -- mostly livestock.
"I'd say [depredation] complaints are up 10 percent to 20 percent this year," said John Hart, district supervisor for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services, which investigates wolf incidents and traps and kills problem wolves.
As of last week, his agency had received 131 complaints of domestic animals killed or injured by wolves. Last year, officials hadn't receive that many complaints until mid-November. Sixty of the complaints have been verified, compared with 75 all of last year.
While livestock deaths are the most common complaint, wolf attacks on pets tend to make news. There have been several dogs attacked and either killed or injured by wolves in the Grand Rapids-Hill City region this summer. "It's the talk of the town," said Mell.
Dogs often simply disappear, as was the case of a small dog near Grand Rapids. Its owner spotted a wolf in a field shortly before the dog disappeared. And several dogs, including another Lab in the Hill City area, have been seriously injured by wolf attacks.
"This is wolf city up here," Mell said.
Let me just point out that at this time there is absolutely no evidence that anything other than ordinary wolves are involved in the current situation. There is no reason at all to start any rumors about lycanthropy, werewolves, or hyper-intelligent canine off-shoots encroaching on our urban areas. Nope, no reason at all.
I probably should have written that post about silver bullets, shouldn't I have?
2 comments:
I saw this article last week but forgot about it till now
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2009/08/19/wild_dogs_kill_ga_woman_then_husband/
In short a woman was killed by a pack of wild dogs and then when her husband went looking for her...well you get the gist.
We used to have a HUGE problem with packs of feral strays on the southeast side of town - you couldn't take your dog out for a walk without carrying a stout stick to fend the buggers off. But the strays have all but disappeared in recent years, and coyote sightings are now fairly common. You do the math...
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