Mangy wolves seen in Lutsen
Vicki Biggs-Anderson Publisher
Cook County News-Herald
Last Updated: Thursday, December 26th, 2002 05:36:16 PM
A starving, mangy wolf pack has been getting a little too close for comfort for some residents in Lutsen.
Jim Hall, for example, reports that he saw four timber wolves on the road recently. They disappeared into the woods as he drove up, but soon after he got out of his pickup, he glanced back and saw one approaching.
“This wolf was just trotting up toward me,” he said. “He got about 15 feet away or so. I hurried up and got back into my pickup.”
Hall, and other residents who have seen wolves in their neighborhood, all report that the animals appear hungry and thin, apparently suffering from mange.
Alta McQuatters, who lives in Lutsen, said she has been watching a pack of wolves with mange for about three months.
“It’s hard to see them suffer,” she said. “We began seeing them this fall, six of them were laying out in our field, hanging around, just three days ago” she said. “You see some with no hair on their side, some with no fur on their tail — naked with just a puffball on the end — and some with their rumps nearly bare,” she said. “It’s sad because you know that when it gets really cold they are just going to freeze.”
One wolf McQuatters first noticed suffering this fall may already be dead.
“Early this fall we saw a really big, light colored wolf, much bigger than the rest,” McQuatters said. “He had gotten so bad that he was shaking and staggering.” The lifelong trapper and hunter called the local conservation officer asking if the wolf couldn’t be spared a slow, miserable death and put down.
“They said there is nothing we can do,” McQuatters said. “The wolf is a protected species.”
It got quite cold shortly thereafter, and McQuatters said the big male has not been seen for months now.
The pack of six mangy wolves were still hovering about the McQuatters home, which is near Arrowhead Electric Cooperative, last week.
“They’re weak and they are scavenging for any food they can find,” McQuatters said. “We’re trappers, so the (skinned) beaver we put out for them to take — I’d rather they take that than another deer.”
McQuatters has great respect for the wild nature of the wolf, and even though the ones outside her house now are needy, she doesn’t put them in the poor puppy dog category.
“They can’t hunt to find food, so they are getting braver and tamer and coming into yards to look for food or mice or cats or dogs, I’m sure,” she said. “I am not afraid for myself, but I have grandkids — one is two and a half and who knows, she is a small creature.”
“I am keeping her in now,” she said.
Restaurant owner is more cautious
Angie Goettl, Lutsen, is often out after dark.
As co-owner of Tracks Restaurant and Bar on the Ski Hill Road, she is used to seeing wildlife along the road at all hours. What she is not used to is seeing wolves circling her truck in broad daylight.
“They were standing beside my truck and I was pointing the camera out the window, hoping I was aiming in the right direction,” Goettl said last week. The wolves avoided her lens, but the image of her Dec. 17 encounter with them is still sharp in her mind’s eye.
“I was going up to Canada about noon that day and turned left off the Caribou Trail when a wolf ran right out in front of me,” Goettl said. “From the head down, he had no hair.”
She pulled over to get a better look at the animal, then out of the corner of her eye saw another standing in the same driveway. “I pulled up the driveway to check it out, then saw there were about four or five more,” she said. Goettl said.
“Most of them had mange — a couple had big chunks of hair missing — they didn’t look healthy at all,” Goettl said. But the way the wolves acted concerned the local woman every bit as much as they way they looked.
“They began circling my truck, then scampering off behind trees, then coming back around the truck,” she said. “They were checking it out and definitely weren’t afraid of anything.” After trying to snap a few pictures through her window, she carefully backed down the drive and returned home.
Goettl’s home is uphill from the driveway where she encountered the wolves. She thought she had better warn her neighbors and family to keep pets inside that day. Past experience with wolves had taught her to err on the side of caution.
“I love wolves –I think they’re beautiful – but when my sister and I lived up near the border, we were chased on our three wheeler back when I was in junior high,” Goettl said. “That summer, we could hear packs of them howling at night. I never had a fear of them, but hearing and seeing them like that, they are always in the back of your mind.”
When Goettl returned from her trip to Canada two weeks ago, wolves were again on her mind.
“I was kind of nervous that night, I thought I won’t unload my truck until morning until I can see everything – not knowing about mange, I didn’t know what to think,” she said.
She said she feels sorry for the wolves she spied that day. She has not seen them since and expects that they will soon freeze or starve. “I hope they don’t suffer too much,” she said.
Mange among wolves is common.
Mange, a skin disease that afflicts domestic animals as well as wild ones, is caused by mites which burrow into the animals’ skin. Itching follows and the scratching of that itch results in loss of coat. It also means loss of time to hunt. Animals end up colder and hungrier than normal. The exposed skin is also open to infection. Weakened wolves or other animals such as coyote or fox hang around roadsides and houses, hoping for easy pickings. They are not, according to wildlife experts, a threat to human life. Pets are in more danger of picking up the mange mite than in being eaten by the afflicted wild animal.
According to the International Wolf Center in Ely, wolves in northern Wisconsin have been dying as a result of mange this winter. That is on schedule, since the last mange epidemic was 1995 and the mites follow a seven or eight year infestation cycle.