Call of the wild

摘要

In august 2011 Desiree Versteeg, a Dutch mortuarist, was driving home in the suburbs of Arnhem in the eastern Netherlands when she saw an animal in the road. "At first I thought it was a dog. Then I thought it was a fox. Then-I couldn't believe my eyes-I saw it was a wolf." She got out of the car to take a picture. "I was seven or eight metres away from him. He couldn't get away because a fence was blocking his path. He turned and stared at me. That was a frightening moment." Both she and the wolf fled. From Ms Versteeg's photographs, and from the carcass of a deer found nearby-its throat torn out in classic wolf fashion-scientists verified that she was the first person to have seen a wolf in the Netherlands since 1897.