Wolftown

Mayor Dwyer granted John permission to observe the wolf hunt if he rode along with Wayne McDowell, who agreed with the idea. Also, the mayor authorized John to view Wayne’s scientific data.

The Nature Protection Society was founded in 1985, and Paula hired John in 1997. Over the past three years, he worked hard, gaining real experience, participating in training, and independently studying. He accompanied Paula on the last trip to Wolftown, which went well, and he developed a good business acquaintanceship with Happy Howlers, the wolf sanctuary. Paula sent John to Wolftown alone, despite his newness, because he functioned as an observer, simply giving Wolftown people a good general impression of the Nature Protection Society. Since Wolftown was his first opportunity to represent the Nature Protection Society Wisconsin branch single-handedly, Paula supervised him closely. Neither he nor she expected such a serious situation.

John opted to tell Paula about his and Kevin’s böxenwolf conversations later; something so private and wild required Kevin’s permission. He summarized other events since his last update.

Paula said, “Well, Wayne suggests he hire you for a while. I told him it was your decision.”

“Mayor Dwyer said if I snuck around, I would have to leave town,” John said. “Finding useful, official information seems difficult.”

“Wayne feels the authorization should be unnecessary. In my opinion, the way he said it was a little suspicious.”

The thunderstorm disrupted the phone lines, but eventually, John heard Paula say: “I’m concerned you might get into trouble with the police, possibly unjustifiably.”

My lawyer says he was a werewolf, and a public defender can’t get here until the flood stops, John thought. As the phone lines went down, he said, “They let an attorney be present and I didn’t feel threatened.”

John hesitated to spend the satellite phone’s battery—he fully updated Paula. If she worried, she would call him. The Nature Protection Society owned the satellite phone but required each employee to bring a satellite phone into the field. Paula and John thought a wolf hunt called for wilderness preparation. The wolves roamed and hunted inside city limits but lived in the woods.

Then John called Paula. “I’m using the satellite phone. About your last concern, so far, I’m not worried.”

“I was going to say leave if you become worried, but can you?”

“If I walked, yeah, but I know better.”

“Oh, good Lord! Don’t!”

“From what I’ve seen, I can’t imagine a worse problem than hiking through a flood.”

“Be careful!”

Because Wayne had a legal question for Kevin, preferably asked in person, Kevin and John watched for him through City Hall lobby windows. They barely saw the street.

“I’m thinking about how other people might look at a böx—transfor—wol—”

“I know who you mean. Böxenwolves.”

“Good. Why do you think people fear them?”

“It is possible the stories about losing control of oneself came from a person’s temperament. A person might feel freer or more primal in wolf form and take advantage of it. I could think of a reason that doesn’t assume böxenwolves exist. How would other people look at it?”

“It’s my personal opinion. Monsters sometimes look like real animals. If people think the real animal is scary, sometimes they are scared of monsters that look like animals. Could people be scared of böxenwolves because people are scared of wolves?”

“Possibly.”

“Do you mind if I ask alike are böxenwolves and wolves?” John asked.

Kevin said, “A böxenwolf looks just like a regular wolf. You can tell the difference when we move, though.”

“Why?”

“It takes practice. I couldn’t figure out my ears and tail.”

“Sometimes people thought one thing caused an effect, but something else did. I’m not saying you are wrong. Do you know what paralytic rabies is?”

“I felt calm and friendly, not at all rabid.”

“With paralytic rabies, an animal can be rabid and non-aggressive. It causes paralysis and sometimes animals act tame. So, could a wolf with paralytic rabies look like a böxenwolf?”

“Swallowing and folding up my tongue was difficult. I’m more willing to believe rabid wolves attacked our town than that violent böxenwolves did,” Kevin said. “Other people have very different opinions and experiences than mine.”

“I’m here to learn about them,” John said.

Several minutes later, Wayne rushed indoors, and squelched over, as tablespoon-worths of water puddled on the floor. He, John, and Kevin said hello. Wayne said Suzanne Giese (his employee and a wolf attack victim) was stable but showed few signs of recovery. Because of the attack, Calvin Kowalski quit, between the attacks and the flood, and Glenn Malone stayed home.

“What can John know without getting into legal trouble?” Wayne asked.

Kevin said, “If you or someone else accesses a government office’s evidence or data without permission, you would have broken policy and could have broken the law. If the person gives it to someone else, he breaks the law. The person you gave it to may not have had authorization.”

“Great, I’m not going to learn anything,” John said.

“You might not want to get information from Billy Schuster,” Wayne said.

“I believe Billy knows where the line is,” Kevin said.

The conversation answered Wayne’s legal question, so Kevin said goodbye.

“Do you want a job?” Wayne asked.

“If I worked for Happy Howlers, I’d be working for an organization that tries to capture a wolf on behalf of a government that intends to kill it. I can’t work for you,” John said.

“Then I’m going to call Sharon, the mayor’s secretary, every time you ask a question, and tell her I need approval to answer it. I bet after about twenty or twenty-five questions he will let me say anything.”

“They might think the Nature Protection Society is annoying,” John said.

“I’ll take the blame. And weren’t you arrested?”

“The police had questions about the wolf sighting and why I was in town. I felt uncomfortable answering without a lawyer present.”

“I’m glad you and Billy Schuster survived.”

“If I was in a wolf attack again, I would chase it away or tranquilize it. I can’t think of a way to make the wolf attack me, instead of somebody else, without hurting it, though.”

“We have enough tranquilizers for Jurassic Park, and I have an extra tranquilizer gun. I confiscated it from a patroller who tranquilized a wolfjäger.”

“Oh no!”

“The wolfjäger is fine.”

“Good. I don’t want my behavior to cause an unresolvable conflict between us or someone else,” John said.

“Same here. I’m armed, and we won’t get close to the wolf.”

“My first aid kit plans for wolf bites.”

“The tranquilizer might work before someone bleeds to death. I would pick you over most people I have been working with, and I’m including a policeman. Can you be around armed werewolf hunters?”

“Sure,” John said.

“I bet we can’t stop the patrollers but try if you want.” Wayne sighed. “You know, Mayor Dwyer only allows the wolves to be killed because they have killed and injured so many people.”

“Many people would agree with him,” John said.

“I’d like an alternative to killing the wolf. We have a nice, cozy enclosure set up for the wolves. Maybe capturing them will change his mind.”

Inside the Happy Howler’s animal transport van, Wayne began explaining Wolftown’s situation to John. The lack of communication between the teams baffled Wayne and the authorities’ attitudes frustrated him. He considered the combination ridiculously hazardous.

“I’m pretty sure only Mayor Dwyer puts together the information, and he holds a lot of it back. The rest of us guess and work on our own,” Wayne said.

“He probably just releases the most important things,” John said.

“Nothing has worked, so you’d think he would want us to review everything and come up with new ideas.”

Wayne sighed and unfolded a crinkled and marked-up map. He traced Wolftown’s sectors with his finger: one and two fenced in, three open, four being fenced in, and five open. The town center—City Hall, Holy Trinity Lutheran Church and School, Wolftown Bank, Schultz’s Country Store, space for a farmer’s market, and various businesses in old-fashioned buildings—formed the fifth sector. If responders fenced in the first four sectors, the fences naturally formed chokepoints, also sealable. The defenses withstood Wayne’s ambassador wolves in 1983.

Wayne had increased the wolf count to three, and people reported wolves in every sector. The wolf response teams found no wolves or wolf dens in sectors one and two and fenced them off—and then somebody filmed a wolf inside it. The wolf disappeared before Wayne reached the house. Sector three’s four-inch deep running water deterred most activities. Because of awful weather, the authorities called off the search.

“Ready to go?” Wayne asked.

“Sure,” John said.

“I think the wolves left town. If we find them, we will be lucky. Our other attempts didn’t work. Ruby Klug trains some of her wolfjägers to track wolves. Do you know her?”

“I met her last time I visited. She trains them traditionally with legal wolf fur?”

“Right. But they can’t practice on live wolves,” Wayne said. “The search-and-rescue dogs and county K-9 unit track the wolves better than the wolfjägers, but they aren’t trained for wolves, either. No idea why. The wolves are untagged. We haven’t seen the wolves on trail camera footage yet, but we can’t even retrieve the most recent film.”

John and Wayne passed a pair of patrollers hunched in a doorway.

The woods supported a stable wolf population, which ate well throughout the winter. Wolves could find comfortable, rural high ground, even in minor floods. Humans hardly encroached on wolf territory over the past several years, and the region could support many new wolf packs. Police fined people who interacted with wild wolves and Happy Howlers discouraged the practice, so Wayne doubted the wolves were habituated to people. Dr. Groves tested the wolf attack victims for rabies. However, Wayne thought every idea insufficiently explained the wolves’ behaviors.

Wayne parked in standing water next to a meadow and looked through a pair of binoculars. “Do you see the steer in the pollinator habitat?” He handed the binoculars to John.

The steer stood several inches deep in mud. The shelter of plastic tarps and PVC pipe offered little protection, especially considering the wind had half-collapsed it. Hay floated in an aluminum feeder and the water trough overflowed.

“You want to fix the shelter, don’t you?” Wayne asked.

“Yeah, it is annoying me,” John said.

“You should know we want the wolf to eat the steer instead of people. Bring your tranquilizer gun.”

“Most wolves need meat to survive, but the steer looks miserable,” John disagreed with rearing domesticated animals, but he treated them compassionately.

Belatedly, Wayne warned John about a pothole, but his fishing waders protected him. He and John skidded and slipped in the mud. Between heavy breathing, cracking, popping, and oof noises, Wayne told John about the steer.

Every time the wolf killed somebody, other people transferred the victims to the doctor or funeral home. Because the wolf could not return and feed, it hunted somebody else—but the wolf abandoned the site, and the other wolves never approached it. That increased Wayne’s doubts about surplus killing or ordinary hunting.

Wayne thought the wolves might prefer beef, and Wolftown bought four Angus cattle from a nearby farmer, Mike Davis. In various places near the woods, he made the Angus cattle as comfortable as possible. When a wolf charged the nicely marbled, juicy, unprotected steer, a camouflaged hunter intended to tranquilize the wolf, notify Wayne, and if necessary, euthanize the steer and track the wolf.

And to Wayne’s extreme exasperation, the wolves were totally uninterested in cattle.

Wayne and John spread stained but clean towels on the van seats.

“Let’s get out of here before the shelter falls apart again,” Wayne said, turning up the heater.

“What do you think of the suspect who kills like a wolf or a large dog?” John asked.

“I’ve advised the police about the suspect, so I have to be careful. I keep thinking about ways it could work, but I don’t think they would happen in real life. My best-trained ambassador wolf ever is Daisy. Do you remember her?”

“A car ran over her mother before she was born?”

“I raised Daisy from a pup, and I love her.”

“She is really sweet and cute,” John said.

“But Daisy could kill me in a few seconds because she is still a wolf. If she got confused about human behavior, or I provoked her, she would attack. Training a wolf is possible, and it’s possible to train multiple wolves over a few years.” As Wayne spoke, he turned a corner and crawled down the sloping street. A car floated at the end. Wayne reversed and chose another street, saying, “This intersection always floods, but I always try anyway. If the trained wolf hypothesis is true, and the wild wolf pack hypothesis is true, they could have happened at the same time. It’s very unlikely. It’s worse if someone trained a pack of wolves and let them loose. I wouldn’t leave a wolf somewhere and expect it to attack or not.”

“Don’t wolves and dogs respond differently to training?” John asked.

“Training dogs is very easy compared to wolves. The wolf domesticators must have been crazy. A well-trained wolf might not obey commands. I wouldn’t feel safe training a dog to kill a person.”

“He might figure out you are a person?”

“Right. I’m not talking about the police theories because I don’t know their ideas. I definitely wouldn’t leave a wolf somewhere and expect it to attack, even if it heard the command word somewhere.”

Wayne rolled down his window and argued with a patroller, who refused to let him drive through the fenced-off zone, especially because of John, an outsider. Apparently, the alternative routes flooded while he and John wrestled the steer’s so-called shelter. The storm interfered with walkie-talkies and phone connections. However, Wayne made the patroller write a permission slip for the gate guard on the opposite side.

“You probably can’t answer if I asked what happened during the murders,” John asked.

“The wolf response communication sucks, so I don’t know anything about them for sure. I’ll try to get you the evidence legally. But I’ve worked out different theories with the police, and none of them make sense.”

“Do you think the missing persons have something to do with the wolf attacks?”

“We live in a tourist town, so kids get lost, or a stranger commits a crime, and the police ask for the public’s assistance. We’ve had kidnappings and lost hikers, and we find them pretty quickly. Our last murder was about thirty years ago.”

“The police asked me if I saw the naked man,” John said, unsure if Wayne wanted to answer his question.

“I hope he isn’t a drug addict or having a mental breakdown.”

“If he is, someone needs to find him quickly.”

“Right. I think that’s why the police keep mentioning him. If he is only a streaker, I have no idea why he picked a thunderstorm and quiet streets. We don’t have a good picture of his face, but his height, weight, and profile match Dennis Laufenberg’s. But a lot of men look like them.”

“Officer Schuster and…Foster accused him of corruption?” John said.

“I think if Billy Schuster and Zach Foster’s allegations are true, Dennis Laufenberg could have run away. You can get everything else I know from the police, but you won’t learn much from the news.”

“Aren’t Wisconsin chiefs-of-police appointed?”

“A lot of people knew he was a bad cop, but if it was worse than we thought, we have a bigger problem than him.”

“I can’t believe so many problems began at the same time,” John said.

“It gets in the way of catching the wolves. Why would the wolves keep attacking during a flood?” Wayne asked.

“I can think about it, as a scientist talking to another scientist.”

“We’ve been asking outdoors folks if they have seen anything weird in the woods, like uneaten prey or something.”

“I think wolves kill for survival. Hunting gives them the best opportunity to feed. They always attack for a reason, but maybe we can’t figure it out yet. Maybe we need more data, or we need to learn more about wolves,” John said.

“A lot of victims were hamstrung, so it doesn’t look like playing,” Wayne said.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Wolf Alpha, the fat wolf, is the most dangerous one. I’m not convinced the other wolves have attacked people, but I think one ate a little boy’s pet bunny.”

“How is he?” John asked, as Wayne said:

“He will be fine. I talked to him about wolves.”

Wayne convinced another patroller to let him and John exit sector two, then said, “I think the wolves might have killed more people than the police say. If I’m right, the wolf attacks began earlier than the police say.”

“Really?” John asked.

“A hiker said a wolf attacked her and her husband. We found her while looking for the wolf, but we couldn’t find her husband. I’ll tell you about it when we get to the school. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to tell people this, but I bet people will know about it soon.”

“But we had to identify a body. I don’t think he matched the hiker’s description. I’ve looked at the victims or photos of everyone’s injuries, but not him. He looked too young to drink.”

“It’s terrible,” John said.

“I really don’t think a wolf attacked the kid.”

“Wolftown has been through enough.”

“It’s only bad timing. The flood is a very small problem, and Billy Schuster and Zachary Foster needed to speak up about Chief Laufenberg. No one thought the wolves would act like this, including me. The kid only made a bad few days worse.”