Skip to footer

Wolf attack victim says attack came 'all of a sudden'

A wolf attack victim in northern Minnesota described what officials say is the first documented serious-injury wolf attack on a human in Minnesota. 

|
Dawn Villella/AP/File
A gray wolf is seen at the Wildlife Science Center in Forest Lake, Minn., in this file photo. A Minnesota teen fought off a rare apparent wolf attack last weekend.
  • By Associated Press

| BEMIDJI, Minn.

A 16-year-old who fought off a rare apparent wolf attack in northern Minnesota says he won't be sleeping outside anytime soon.

Noah Graham, of Solway, was camping on Lake Winnibigoshish with five friends last weekend. He told The Pioneer (http://bit.ly/16JUDo4 ) he was talking with his girlfriend just before the animal chomped the back of his head early Saturday.

Department of Natural Resources officials think it's the first documented serious-injury wolf attack on a human in Minnesota. As of Tuesday, the DNR was waiting for DNA test results to confirm whether a wolf trapped and killed in the same campground early Monday is the animal that attacked Graham, and for results on whether it had rabies.

"I had to reach behind me and jerk my head out of its mouth," Graham recalled. "After I got up, I was kicking at it and screaming at it and it wouldn't leave. But then after a while I got it to run away."

The wolf killed Monday had a jaw deformity that prevented its upper and lower teeth from lining up and likely had to scavenge because it wouldn't have been able to kill large prey, said Tom Provost, regional manager for the DNR's enforcement division in Grand Rapids.

Graham said the attack came without warning.

"There was no sound at all. Didn't hear it. It was just all of a sudden there," he said.

Graham's girlfriend fled to her Jeep, while two other members of the camping party slept through all the screaming, kicking and fighting, he said.

He said he called home after the attack and his father told him to call 911.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Wolf attack victim says attack came 'all of a sudden'
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0827/Wolf-attack-victim-says-attack-came-all-of-a-sudden
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe