Wolftown

Wayne continued telling John about the wolves prowling Wolftown and the woods.

On the night of March 8 and 9, Miranda Vasquez perched in a sugar maple tree deep in the woods around Wolftown. The wolf left without eating Sergio’s corpse.

Across Wolftown, civilians and police glimpsed wolves and heard their howling. Chief of Police Dennis Laufenberg himself fired at the wolf, but the wolf escaped.

At approximately 5:00 in the morning, sanitation workers delayed their route because a wolf rummaged through 8 Oak Street’s garbage cans. The sanitation workers waited in the truck until the wolf moseyed away. Ordinary garbage could tear the bags worse than the wolf’s claws had.

After sunrise, Miranda hobbled through the woods. When she noticed wolf signs, she altered her course, fearing another attack. But she struggled along in her chosen direction.

Dr. Groves prepared his clinic for wolf bites.

Officers Allen Klug, Larry Jones, and Melvin Matthews guarded the school bus stop and the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church and School crossing and parking lot. Chief Laufenberg ordered officers to carry standard weapons and tranquilizer guns. The police darts contained ketamine combined with other sedatives. The Wolftown Police Department held optional tranquilizing gun training, and the untrained officers adapted.

Chief Laufenberg authorized shooting if the wolves attacked people, defined by biting or clawing. Wayne advised Chief Laufenberg that wolves attacked with teeth rather than claws. Therefore, since Chief Laufenberg wanted to include clawing, it could be grouped into threatening behavior, like veering off at the last second. He said to John, “When the wolves don’t hurt anyone, Chief Laufenberg and Mayor Dwyer call the attacks a ‘wolf encounter’ or a ‘wolf incident.’ When they have to, they say crap like, ‘The potential for an attack at that time was prevented by…whatever.’”

Throughout the wolf response, Wayne told Chief Laufenberg and Mayor Dwyer that they drew the wrong conclusions from the data and presented their conclusions as facts, which would confuse people. He warned Chief Laufenberg and Mayor Dwyer that when people noticed discrepancies between the authorities’ statements to scientific sources, he would not support the authorities’ statements. He decided against openly contradicting them until the wolf situation was resolved.

“Really?” John knew Wayne was opinionated.

“I’m right, and I like being right, but I don’t need to be right about everything all the time.” Wayne also told Happy Howlers employees to disregard misguided conclusions and instructions. He trusted them to respond to the wolf’s behavior.

“A lot of people knew the police are corrupt and the city government screws up sometimes. I didn’t want to make Wolftown’s problems worse. The more the wolf attacked people, the more Mayor Dwyer listened. When Chief Laufenberg stopped being as involved, the authorities’ responses improved. We agree about things more now. Still, I don’t contradict the police in public, to the media, or to people not involved with the operation. I don’t tell people my opinions, but I’ll give them the raw data. I told my employees to do the same things, but you and me are the exception.”

 “Could you tell me why?”

“You wouldn’t get accurate information. Chief Laufenberg and Mayor Dwyer were very concerned about vigilantes, and they didn’t want to call up the Wolf Guard.”

“The patrollers I saw?”

“Right. If I contradicted the authorities too much, people could have looked for the wolves. I don’t think that is a good idea because an emergency response needs a structure and resources. Normal, scared people can’t get them easily.”

To capture the wolf, Happy Howlers brought slow-acting tranquilizers but relied on the same kind of darts police used. Happy Howlers routinely carried drugs to counteract the sedatives; each employee assigned to the school routes prepared a dose. Wayne dreaded overdosing the wolf. One dart sedated the wolf in several minutes, but people might expect the ketamine to work in seconds and so tranquilize the wolf again. The plans prevented multiple people from firing one dart each. Also, a drowsy, loopy, aggressive wolf could provoke a shooting.

Happy Howlers employees and Wayne carried new camcorders and tape recorders. They recorded the entire time. The employees hung the camcorders around their necks, letting them switch to tranquilizer guns without destroying the camcorders.

A few children wanted to skip school; some parents forced them to school because, among other reasons, the authorities mitigated the risks. Other parents kept their children home and indoors. Parents drove their children to Holy Trinity and congested the streets surrounding the school bus stop. Wayne’s grandchildren hesitated to attend school, but he told them to listen to their parents. 

Members of the Wolf Guard or people who remembered armed themselves. So did the hunting and gun-owning parents, relations, and friends—at least two hunters carried bows.

“If I saw a wolf attacking my kid, I might attack it, too,” John said.

“My grandkids and their friends were going to be there. They were scared, so I told them we were ready to stop the wolf,” Wayne said. “I was worried about crossfire or confusion, and the police asked people to disarm. I bet a few people had concealed carry permits.”

Beginning at the Wolftown sign, a wolf stalked the bus. The bus driver, Lori Ritter, notified her supervisor, who called Wolftown police. Sometimes the wolf galloped alongside or behind, or people chased it away. The driver and children saw one wolf at a time, but their descriptions varied.

Wayne and John knew wolves were endurance predators, but the school bus should have outstripped them. They had absolutely no idea why a wolf would consider a school bus a prey animal. Hunting walking schoolchildren made perfect sense.

Officer Klug waved for Lori to open the school bus door; Wayne and Suzanne waited on either side of the bus. Abel charged Officer Klug, whose tranquilizing gun jammed. He yelled, “Wolf, wolf, wolf! Tranquilizer—Jammed!”

Wayne and Suzanne sent people back to their cars. At the same time, Lori closed the school bus door and Officer Klug hit Abel’s head with the tranquilizing gun and, following him, pepper-sprayed the wolf. The pepper spray blew onto Officer Klug and people, too, but mainly sprayed Abel’s back. Abel bolted.

Suzanne could have tranquilized the wolf, but he moved too quickly near too many people to risk it, and she thought she heard Officer Klug say, “Tranquilizer.”

Before she finished asking for clarification, Officer Klug unjammed his gun and the dart hit Abel. He yelled, “Tranquilizer, tranquilizer, tranquilizer!”

Wayne and Suzanne chased Abel between the houses. Abel ran at over twenty miles per hour and turned corners, losing Wayne and Suzanne. They hoped to follow the tracks, except they jumbled with the other prints. Officer Klug told them to return to the bus stop unless they could intercept the wolf.

Suzanne picked up the dart. It probably had dangled from Abel’s skin, then the running jolted it free. They gave it to Officer Klug.

“Will the pepper spray damage his eyes?” Officer Klug asked.

“I’m pretty sure it won’t blind him permanently,” Wayne said. “But if he’s scared and in pain, he could be more aggressive. I don’t know for sure because people don’t pepper-spray wolves.”

Officers Jones and Matthews would also yell, “Wolf, wolf, wolf” when they saw him and “tranquilizer, tranquilizer, tranquilizer” if they tranquilized him. Shooting would follow the police department’s training for dog or other animal attacks.

At Holy Trinity’s crossing, Officer Jones sat on the police car’s roof.

Officer Matthews stood in the middle of Holy Trinity’s parking lot. Less than a minute after the last student entered the school, Abel pounced on Officer Matthews. Calvin Kowalski saw Abel nip at Officer Matthews’ back thigh, and Officer Matthews heard the snap. He dodged and landed on his side as Calvin tranquilized Abel.

The wolf galloped past Officer Klug, who lacked a clear line of fire. Somebody else missed shooting Abel and anything important. The crowd objected to firing and missing and wondered why Officer Matthews held his fire. He refused to acknowledge their questions, let alone explain to civilians. Also, Wayne suspected who fired, but the police would not release the name.

Somehow, Abel escaped.

John said, “I listened to the radio on the drive here, and the reporter said that the wolf attacks began yesterday. Wasn’t Abel attacking the police officers?”

“I think the wolves could have been engaging in exploratory attacks.” Wayne sighed. “Abel only attacked police, and the police don’t always tell people what happened to officers. The police gave the media the information. Most people didn’t have a good view, so it could look like a charge. Abel was really fast. A reporter would have trouble figuring it out.”

All day, Wayne led Happy Howlers: gathering physical data, responding to wolf sightings, and tracking the wolves.

Nancy, Wayne’s wife, collected personal accounts and ran errands, such as having camera film developed or making copies of people’s camcorder footage.

The secretary, Rebecca, provided authorities with as much information as they wanted, while unable to acquire information from them. She joked about requesting records under The Freedom of Information Act, but Wayne said to wait a few months.

“And Schuster and Foster called the office,” Wayne said. “They told Rebecca to only give copies to the police. They said we needed to keep the originals and recommended keeping copies.”

“Why?” John jumped off the assumption that Wolftown police mishandled evidence.

“Rebecca gave the police copies because they might keep the tapes. Making back-ups is a good idea. Foster said, ‘Keep the copies somewhere secure,’ and Schuster said, ‘Off the premises.’ They asked me to contact them if I saw misconduct. I haven’t needed to.”

Calvin noticed police officers at 3 Elm Street, but he continued working as planned, staying out of the way. Officer Lang told him to stop and forbid documenting the wolf sightings on the block. Later in the day, Wayne requested permission, but the Wolftown Police Department said it may interfere with an ongoing investigation.

Two miles apart, between 1:06 and 1:09 PM, Glenn Malone and Calvin both saw a wolf. Neither wolf ran swiftly enough to be the same wolf, and they ran in different directions. Glenn’s wolf sprinted away when he tranquilized it. Although he chased it, the wolf outran him. He searched long after the ketamine would have worn off.

At about 3:30, oddly, Suzanne discovered a wolf strap tangled in a boxwood.

“Do you know what a wolf strap is?” Wayne asked, showing John a picture.

“Yeah, I saw that one in the police station. They have a wet one, too,” John said.

Something other than the unexpectedness seemed weird to Suzanne, but even days later, she could not explain what. Though she did not believe in böxenwolves, she supposed local people owned wolf straps. Wayne told her to document the site, and, if she considered the wolf strap suspicious, turn it over to the police.

The officer on duty handed the wolf strap back, saying, “We aren’t taking werewolves into consideration, ma’am.”

Officer Lang said, “I’ll handle it,” and stored it in an evidence bag. He also questioned Suzanne.

People found wolf prints, mostly from Barker and Charlie, in gardens, half-brown grass, and trampled crocuses, and on pavements. A forsythia snagged wolf fur. By the end of the day, Wayne noticed a lack of verifiable wolf feces, and nobody reported wolves urinating or marking territory.

On various streets, a wolf scared people into their houses, businesses, and cars. One police car patrolled for wolves, while other officers performed their normal duties and investigated Wolftown’s police corruption and murder.

Wolves chased squirrels and birds, and people barely let their dogs outside.

Ralph Turner and his neighbors noticed fewer cats on the block in the days after the wolves’ arrival, but a normal amount of yowling. He thought little of the bloody grass.

While Happy Howlers and the police guarded the school bus’s drop-off route, the wolves roamed everywhere except the children’s routes. Wayne suspected Abel abandoned town after the pepper-spraying.

Meteorologists predicted storms and flooding in the next several days, which Wayne predicted would deter the wolves. The woods provided comfortable high grounds compared to Wolftown’s higher areas.

Wayne and Glenn tracked two routes, the first about one mile deep into the woods. In the twilight, they lost the second trail, found it again, and went home before they lost it and themselves. The decision relieved their wives; in retrospect, Wayne hated it. Quitting the wolf search for the night ranked in his top three worst decisions.

Mayor Dwyer contacted Wilderness Search-and-Rescue, a non-profit organization. Lacking evidence of unusual wolf activities elsewhere, Mayor Dwyer thought the situation did not require assistance from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Wisconsin Emergency Management, the local fish and game association, and other private organizations.

Although the Wolftown Police Department searched for people missing in the woods, like the beaver trapper, the police could not spare any officers. The police department placed Billy Schuster and Zachary Foster on unpaid leave while investigating their allegations of corrupt officers. Two fewer officers and three major problems—the corruption, the murder, and the wolves—overworked the department.

Rebecca called every potentially helpful organization in the phone book. Somebody could have encountered the wolves or seen something odd, but Wayne also wanted to warn people about the wolves. Ruby Klug directed Rebecca to wolfjäger owners who trained them for tracking wolves. All evening, Rebecca tracked down trackers and hunters willing to search the woods, to the annoyance of Mayor Dwyer and Chief Laufenberg.

“How are they different from the people in town?” John asked.

“They had instructions from search-and-rescue, and we were going to be calm and intentional. Some of them had search-and-rescue experience, and they weren’t going to shoot someone.”

On March 10, at 5:00 AM, people gathered to look for the wolves. Derrick Charles led the search-and-rescue team, which also brought necessary medical supplies for a wolf attack. Hunters carried guns capable of killing wolves because the law allowed them to shoot wolves in self-defense.

Since March 2, Derrick Charles led the search for Joel Block, the missing beaver trapper. Joel liked to spontaneously extend his stays in the woods, but he prepared well for emergencies and accidents. Erica, his wife, thought he could survive for weeks. She worried when he missed his shift at the BP station, then around 1:00 AM, March 2, she called search-and-rescue in the evening. Erica expected him to wander through the door a week later, oblivious to the search.

The search-and-rescue team found Joel’s footprints at his well-kept traps, but no signs of an animal attack. Erica guessed Joel might return to check his traps. When search-and-rescue returned to his traps, they found wolf tracks. When Derrick sent pictures and when the wolves began killing people, Wayne thought the tracks did not give evidence for or against a wolf attack.

Nobody could determine whether or not somebody accompanied Joel into the woods. Joel’s trail went cold; the other human signs could be unrelated to him.

John considered trapping a torment, whatever the method or prey, but he wanted Joel to survive the flood, and he felt sorry for Erica. He hoped search-and-rescue would recover his body or explain his death.

Wayne and Glenn marked the point to begin searching, but their trail markers vanished overnight. The maps indicated they started in the right spot, and some wolf signs remained. Wayne thought he and Glenn had muddled the trail.

The wolves’ trails became confusing, so the searchers dispersed further.

A team tracked bare human footprints until they led out of the wolf signs. It would have alarmed Derrick if there was a sign of a scuffle or distress. Before the flood, he double-checked the area and declared it a false alarm.

Eddie Miller practically stumbled upon Miranda, who lay almost unconscious on the damp, cold ground. Search-and-rescue called an air ambulance and administered first aid.