What a howler! Workmen rescue ‘dog’ from freezing river... then find it’s a wolf
THIS cunning hunter would never let humans near him under normal circumstances.
But when you’ve fallen into a freezing river and even your whiskers are covered in icicles, a warm rub-down is most welcome.
Luckily, this wolf owes his life to the fact that his rescuers thought he was a dog.
Dam workers Robin Sillamae and Rando Kartsepp sprang into action when they thought they heard the sound of someone’s lost pet in distress. Clearing a path through ice, they pulled ‘the stray’ to safety from the Parnu river in Estonia.
His soaking fur weighed him down but they took him back to their car nearby.
‘We had to carry him over the slope... he weighed a fair bit,’ said Mr Kartsepp who had no idea he was handling a wild creature – although the wolf’s falling body temperature had made him docile.
‘He was calm, slept on my legs. When I wanted to stretch them, he raised his head for a moment,’ added Mr Kartsepp.
The workers took it to a local vet who hadn’t seen any ‘dogs’ like it before. It took a local hunter to confirm it was no pet but a one-year-old wolf.
The Estonian Union for the Protection of Animals paid for its treatment and a spokesman said: ‘Luckily everything turned out well.’ It has now been released into the wild. Wolves have lived in the Baltic state for 10,000 years and it is still home to at least 150, though only a handful have been collared.