Mystery Beast Stalking British Columbia Community
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on May 26th, 2011
Watch news video footage here.
Mysterious animal stalking B.C. community
Residents of a small community in British Columbia have a mysterious killer in their midst and are taking steps to protect their pets, farm animals and small children.
An animal thought to be part timber wolf has been stalking Bowen Island, just off the coast of Vancouver, for about six months — preying mainly on dogs and cats.
“Anyone who has family, has pets, and anyone who has seen it, seen the way it looks at you, knows that it’s dangerous to have around,” said island resident Stacey Powers.
Her husband John recently caught the animal on video, and saw it snatch a gosling out of a nearby pond.
The animal has “shown no fear of coming up close to the house,” he said, “and obviously you don’t want to have a concern that he’s there and all of a sudden the kids are in his range.” The family is keeping its pets indoors and young children nearby.
A local veterinarian believes it is part dog, part wolf and that it may have been abandoned after being brought to the island.
“They are a mixed-up species. They are part domestic with the instincts of a wolf,” said Dr. Alastair Wescott. “They don’t react normally and so people can’t manage them, and so dumping them is a common thing to do.”
It is thought to be a young male weighing about 90 pounds.
Missing pet signs are posted all over the island. The animal has killed at least three dogs, more than a dozen cats and two sheep. Many deer carcasses have also been found.
The municipality has set up a hotline, bought a tranquilizer gun, and enlisted both Westcott and a professional trapper to find the animal.
Once caught, it is expected to be euthanized. Rescue organizations have been contacted, but the animal’s behaviour has been so vicious they say there’s no chance of rehabilitation.CTV.ca News Staff
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
If you watch the embedded video and/or read the article, it’s not really much of a “mystery beast” at all – merely a wolf/dog hybrid, abandoned by its owner – but I guess we’ll take our “crypto-news” when/where-ever we can find it.
Sad to think that the only alternative is to exterminate this animal. Couldn’t they just tranquilize it and put it in a preserve or some sort of controlled area away from people?
It does sound like a dog to me, perhaps a wolf/dog hybrid. Wolf/dog hybrids are a terrible idea as they tend to keep their wilder instincts combined with the lack of fear of humans that dogs typically exhibit. Wolves are not just dogs living in the woods. Dogs are separated from wolves by many, many generations of domestication and selective breeding by humans. To combine that with a wolf is usually a bad mix, and even dog breeds which have used wolf combinations to some extent and carefully bred, such as Saarloos wolfhounds (yes, that is a real breed), can be unruly and difficult to control.
Even so, this doesn’t even have to be a hybrid. Dogs that go feral can be quite vicious, all the more compounded by their lack of fear of humans and tendency to associate humans with food.