Wolves or no wolves, Cantwell couple survives dramatic ordeal
Denali Highway rescue
Scott and Vivian Mayo stand with their Jack
Russell terrier, Elvis. The couple was found in a dramatic rescue off
the Denali Highway earlier this week. Photo courtesy of Kaeleen Mayo
Posted: Sunday, December 15, 2013
FAIRBANKS – When the “wolves” showed up, the only
thing left burning on the snowmachine that she had lit on fire to keep
from freezing to death was the plastic windshield, Vivian Mayo said. “All of a sudden, Elvis started getting barky and
agitated,” Mayo said of her dog, a small, black-and-white Jack Russell
terrier that was her only company for the better part of three days
while she awaited rescue.
It was dusk, and the 57-year-old Mayo,
who was enduring her third night out in the cold alone after her
snowmachine broke down in a remote spot off the Denali Highway, saw what
she initially thought were caribou approaching.
Whatever it was, Elvis didn’t like
it, Mayo said. The frightened little dog turned tail and took refuge in a
burned-out hole nearby that was left after Mayo had burned some
belongings in an earlier attempt to keep warm.
That’s when Mayo realized what she was looking at weren’t caribou. “ I said, ‘Oh my God, those are wolves,’” she said, adding she heard them making a “bird chirping sound. I could hear them all around me,” Mayo said. “I could see some of them.”
Whether the “wolves” were real or
imagined, the product of hallucinations caused by hypothermia or sleep
deprivation, is up for debate, but to Mayo, they couldn’t have been more
real. “I was there; they weren’t,” Vivian
Mayo said on Friday, two days after she was found by rescuers. “I went
through it; they didn’t. That trooper was not sitting there with me,” she said. “That wolf pack was all around me, waiting to attack me.”
**Okay, okay. If you really want to read this story (and it gets pretty good where the wolves are concerned) then go HERE. I'm sorry that these folks had to endure what they did, but stories like these only serve to further sensationalize wolves in the media.**
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