Saturday, November 21, 2009

Wolves In Gambrilll State Park!!! (or maybey german sheppards or maybey coyotes)

Went for a night ride last night and at Gambrill state park at about 6:30.  I was on one of the dirt roads that go through the park when I saw a silhouette of what I thought was a deer.  It was frozen just looking at me.  It had four legs and was kind of shaped like a deer.  It wasn’t till I was pretty close about 100 ft away did I realize it was a dog.  It looked like a German Sheppard.  As I got even closer (20ft away) I noticed another German Sheppard just off the road also frozen looking at me.  No tail wagging or barking just a blank stare.

I was moving along at about 17mph and it was pitch black so from the time I noticed it wasn’t a deer to the time I noticed I was next to a couple of big dogs was a few seconds.  The thought crossed my mind that these might be wolves.  I didn’t see any collars, I hadn’t seen any a possible owner and no people or vehicles parked on the side of the road.

Thought about turning around to get a better look.  They didn’t show any sign of aggression but I would feel stupid if I did and was attacked.  Then I thought to myself Are they chasing after me right now!?! Could I stay upright if one of them got a hold of my leg!?!? being alone in the dark was making me more paranoid than I would normally be.  I decided to maintain the same speed that I passed them at not wanting them to think I was panicking.  If you don’t want be treated like a victim don’t act like a victim (I learned that from watching Opera)

I left the park and took the road around back to my car to avoid having to ride through the wolf gantlet again.  When I got back to my apartment I goggled to see what kind of wolf lives in this area could have been red wolf

EDIT...
Apparently red wolfs pretty rare though in the mid Atlantic area. Probably more likely they were coyotes.  At the time this happened only coyotes I had seen were very skinny ones in AZ desert (what I saw didn't look the same).  Since then though I have seen documentary on coyotes of Yellowstone that are bigger and look like smaller wolfs.  I Think its most likely what I saw that night were two healthy coyotes.

3 comments:

Anna said...

We should set up one of those motion sensor cameras!

Anna said...

You should contact these people:
http://www.redwolves.com/downloads/04%20summer%20rw%20news.pdf

mike joos said...

It would be nice to have photo proof… and… Thanks for the link.