ShareThisBy HAYLEY MICK
Brenda Wright says she and her two children had just eaten their turkey sandwiches and settled onto their beach towels when the horror began.
Her son, Casey, 12, noticed a black, doglike animal running across the Northern Ontario beach where the family was enjoying the last day of summer vacation.
In a sudden and unrelenting attack, the animal ripped into Casey's buttock, tore his mother's hands and leg, and bloodied his 14-year-old sister's scalp, lunging after the family of six as they fled screaming into Lake Superior.
"I was trying to fight him off and he grabbed my finger. I thought he pulled it off. ... Honest to God, it looks like hamburger meat," Wright said Tuesday from her mother's home in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.
Wright's family was not the only one to face the wolf. The attacks by one Canis lupus ended with the animal dead and several people, including a 3-year-old girl, bloodied, torn and terrified.
For Jerry and Rachel Talbot, it started at around 4 p.m. The Wawa, Ontario, couple, on their way to a wedding with granddaughters Leah, 3, and Madison, 5, pulled off the highway for a quick swim at a popular day picnic area in Lake Superior Provincial Park.
According to park staff, more than a dozen others were enjoying the end of the Labor Day weekend at Katherine's Cove when the Talbot family wandered onto the beach and began to remove their shoes.
Jerry Talbot noticed a black animal chasing a girl across the sand. Too slow for the girl, the animal veered off and grabbed a slower, smaller target: Leah.
It clamped its jaws around the blond toddler's left upper arm and began dragging her away from her grandmother and sister, said Leah's mother, Josee Morgan, who told the story Tuesday from Marathon, Ontario. The girl was dragged about 6 yards before the wolf dropped her on her back, startled by the shrieks of her grandparents and those who had jumped in to help.
The wolf grabbed the hood of the little girl's black jacket. This time, Rachel Talbot's advances and screams caused the wolf to drop the girl momentarily and Talbot lunged forward, scooped up the child and raced to her vehicle. Jerry Talbot and Madison were close behind.
The attack on the Wright family occurred on Bathtub Island, a large rocky area within wading distance of the mainland and just south of Katherine's Cove.
Park superintendent Bill Elliott, a 17-year veteran of the park and seasoned hunter, was alerted by two other visitors.
He said a woman was bitten in a third incident Monday.
Monday evening, Elliott shot the wolf, about half a mile north of where Leah had been attacked.
The wolf's head has been sent to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in Ottawa, where it will be tested for rabies. Elliott said that the young, full-grown male was limping, possibly from an older injury caused by a vehicle.
