One woman's harrowing adventure in the Canadian wilderness
Joanne Barnaby was picking morel mushrooms with her dog Joey in the wildfire-scorched forests of Canada’s Northwest Territories when she heard a growl and turned around.
“There was a long, tall, very, very skinny wolf. A black wolf. And his legs were spread and his hair was standing, and he was growling, and baring his teeth," Barnaby told CBC News.
For the next 12 hours, the starving wolf drove the woman and her dog deeper and deeper into the forest. Barnaby believes the wolf was trying to separate the two and wear them down.
"He was dogged. He was just determined," Barnaby said. "I was in trouble."
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As night set in, so did the vicious mosquitoes. By around 4:30 a.m., exhausted and dehydrated, Barnaby heard a grunt. She recognized the sound as a mother bear, and in the distance she could heard the cub’s response. Then she got an idea.
"I realized that there was a chance that the mother bear would tackle the wolf if she felt that the wolf was a threat," Barnaby explained.
She walked in the direction of the cub. If her plan backfired, the bear would likely come after her. But according to Barnaby, before she even saw the cub, the wolf and bear were locked in combat.
"I heard this big crashing behind me and realized that the mama bear had attacked the wolf, or maybe the other way around, I don't know, but they were fighting and I could hear the wolf yelping and I could hear the mama bear growling and I could hear all this crashing and I just took off!"
Free of the wolf, the pair journeyed back to the highway, where they were met by a group of Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Aside from mosquito bites, Barnaby was relatively unharmed after the 12-hour ordeal.
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