A Northwest Territories woman found herself stuck between a wolf and a bear -- and chose the bear.
Joanne Barnaby of Hay River, N.W.T., was picking mushrooms with a friend and her dog, Joey, when a big lone wolf appeared behind her. The wolf began growling menacingly and blocked her and Joey from going back to the truck.
“Joey lurched forward and started barking really loud,” Barnaby told CTV News Channel. “Normally Joey can scare off a bear by doing that so I think he was a little confused when the wolf didn’t back down.”
According to Barnaby, the thin but intimidating wolf scared Joey, a crossbreed of a terrier and a Rottweiler, to the point where he refused to leave her side.
The wolf continued to block their way back up to the highway where her truck was parked, so Barnaby and Joey began walking along the highway into wildfire-burned bush and clouds of mosquitoes. According to Barnaby, the sound of the mosquitoes buzzing was so loud that she couldn’t hear herself think.
“It was hard to concentrate and make decisions. At one point I stopped and did some prayers around those mosquitoes and asked my ancestors to help me forget about them,” Barnaby told The Canadian Press.
At one point, she took a break at a pond to drink some water and massage the cramps out of her leg muscles. Barnaby felt herself “losing it” in the forest and began talking to her loved ones as a way to reconnect and keep herself focussed.
Barnaby then heard a noise she had heard many times before: a mother bear calling for her cub and the cub answering back. Barnaby knew that this was her chance to get away from the wolf and began walking towards the cub.
“Out of desperation I decided to walk towards a cub that had been separated from her mom,” Barnaby said. “They were a fair distance apart from each other… I was hoping that the mama bear would find the wolf that was also behind me before I reached the cub.”
According to Barnaby, the second she heard the wolf and the bear run into each other, she took off running for the highway with Joey. She could hear growling from the bear and mostly yelping from the wolf.
Unfortunately, her journey back to the highway was cut impeded by a stretch of impassable deadfall that caused her to detour for multiple kilometres.
It was 4:30 am when they reached the road, ending the 18-hour journey. Two searchers found Barnaby and Joey once they had reached the road almost immediately.
According to Barnaby, other than being sore she and Joey and are just fine. She also said she would go back into the bush -- but only with her gun.
With files from The Canadian Press
