Wolf Story

Between Hamburg and Bremen (on the north end of Germany), there's this city of Rotenburg an der Wumme....a city of 22,000 residents.

The city came up in the news today....Focus (the German news magazine).  There's a bit of chaos going on.

Local gardener had gone out to the cemetery to do some landscaping work, and suddenly out of nowhere....a wolf had grabbed upon his hand as he was kneeling.  Naturally, Germans don't usually anticipate this type of event and he spent a second or two eyeballing the wolf, and then noted somewhere behind the wolf....maybe a stone-throws away.....stood three additional wolves.  He summarized this very quickly....the initial wolf had taken a risk, and the three others were trying to see if the guy goes down, and then they'd probably conduct the rest of the attack.

At this point, some church employee entered the scene, with a hammer.....knocking the heck out of the attacking wolf.  That wolf was injured, and then ran off with his associates.

Naturally, this has riled up the local community.  This pro-wolf or friendly-wolf angle by the German government (particularly the Ministry of the Environment) has probably hit some peak.

For probably twenty years, there's been an attempt to allow wolves to enter back into the wilds of Germany, and the general public have often been told that this is a good thing. 

With this attack, it's first known attack on humans by wolves in decades.

What'll happen now?  My guess is that some political agenda folks will hype up the wolf situation and for a year....this will be argued over whether allowing wolves to reenter the German forests was a wise decision or not.  Eventually, after an attack or two on school-kids.....a hunt will be allowed, and the pro-wolf lobby effort will end. 

The problem I see....if you go to one single female wolf and she has seven pups....with this roughly occurring every twelve months.  You can do the math....but in one single decade, you have a massive problem brewing in one single community.