Rob
Knows what it's all about
Member # 75
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posted January 25, 2005 10:20 AM
A man’s evening jog became a struggle for his life in northern Saskatchewan when a timber wolf lunged at his head and repeatedly sank its teeth into him. But Fred Desjarlais, 55, was able to fight off several attacks by the large predator and then wrestled it into submission long enough for a busload of co-workers to arrive and scare the beast away. "I don't know what came over me or how I did it," Desjarlais said from his Saskatoon home where he was recuperating. "All I know is I had his head and I wasn't letting go until someone came to help me." Desjarlais works for Cameco Corp.'s uranium milling facility in Key Lake, about 640 km north of Saskatoon. He had just finished his shift at 7 p.m. New Year's Eve, and decided to jog the 3 km back to camp instead of catching the shuttle bus, when he was attacked. At one point, he and the wolf were face to face as the beast reared on its hind legs and looked down at him, he said. "He had a big mouth and a big head," Desjarlais recalled. "It was a bad attack -- it bit him twice really badly -- but Fred's a remarkable man and very heroic," said Kimm Barker, Cameco's Key Lake safety officer. "It wasn't a very smart wolf because of all the people it could have picked, it chose one of the strongest." "He was taunting me, (walking) in a circle around me. I looked around real quick and thought, 'I hope he's alone,' " Desjarlais said. Co-workers returning to camp on the bus spotted the pair. The wolf that attacked Desjarlais was found the next day. It was shot and killed and sent to a lab for testing. [Bangs’ note after talking with local Canadian biologists- The wolf [which was assumed to have attacked the man] was not rabid and was in good condition. It attacked the man about 300m from camp and at least one bite broke the skin and required stitches. The local wolf pack feeds at the camp dump and stays in that immediate area. Apparently both wolves and black bears routinely feed at the mine’s garbage dump. The camp is working with local biologists to rectify the garbage/wildlife problem. The garbage-fed black bears are very bold and routinely come into the camp area but no one has been injured by them yet. This wolf attack appears to be another case of a healthy wild wolf losing its fear of people through food habituation and then attacking a person. This is a good reminder that healthy wild wolves have attacked people in N. America, and although no one has been killed yet- it could certainly happen. Wild wolves need to be kept wild and be respected just as any other wild animal should be
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"Where did all these #$%^&* Indians come from?" Gen. George Armstrong Custer
Posts: 224 | From: Clancy Montana | Registered: Feb 2003
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