A man in Alaska stumbled upon a timber wolf that had been caught in a trap and was badly injured. Even thought the wolf was close to death. The man was initially scared when he saw the large animal, but then noticed that the wolf had milk and realized she had puppies who needed her to survive.
He decided to try and save the mother wolf and set out to find the puppies. After following her paw marks, he found a den a half mile away and called out to the puppies with wolf howls. Four starving pups came out and began nursing on the man’s fingers. The man carefully put them in his bag and took them back to their mother, who was overjoyed to see them. Despite her initial mistrust of the man, he knew she would die without food, so he brought her the remains of a deer to eat.
“So I decided to search for her pups instead and began to look for incoming tracks that might lead me to her den. Fortunately, there were still a few remaining patches of snow. After several moments, I spotted paw marks on a trail skirting the bog,” the story originally appeared in the May 1987 issue of Reader’s Digest reads. “One by one, I placed them in a burlap bag and headed back down the slope. When the mother wolf spotted me, she stood erect. Possibly picking up the scent of her young, she let out a high-pitched, plaintive whine. I released the pups, and they raced to her. Within seconds, they were slurping at her belly.”
For the next few days, the man camped near the mother wolf and her cubs, providing them with food and tending to their needs. He even formed a bond with the cubs. One day, unexpectedly, the mother wolf wagged her tail slightly as he prepared her meal.
The man decided to take a risk and approached the wolf to try and free her. She eventually allowed him to remove the trap and tend to her injured paw. Once she was free, she limped off towards home, but stopped and beckoned the man to follow her. She led him to a mountain meadow where she introduced him to her pack. It was a transformative experience for the man as he spent time with so many wolves who treated him like one of their own. When it was time for him to leave, the mother wolf howled mournfully, not realizing that they would meet again many years later.
Four years after, the grateful mother wolf repaid her debt!
Four years after his first encounter with the mother wolf at Coho Creek, the man found himself in danger again while hunting for steel traps by the bog. Suddenly, a bear charged at him and chased him. In a moment of desperation, the man shouted out “wolf cries,” and was relieved when a familiar figure appeared before him. It was the wolf he had saved years ago, coming to his rescue.
“Four years later, after serving in World War II, I returned to Coho Creek,” the story reads. “It was good to be back among the soaring spruce and breathing the familiar, bracing air of the Alaskan bush. Then I saw, hanging in the red cedar where I had placed it four years before, the now-rusted steel trap that had ensnared the mother wolf.
“The wolf edged closer, ears erect, body tense, and stopped a few yards off, her bushy tail wagging slightly. Moments later, the wolf was gone. I left Kupreanof Island a short time after that, and I never saw the animal again. But the memory she left with me will always be there, a reminder that there are things in nature that exist outside the laws and understanding of man.”
(h.t: yahoo)
More about this incredible story in the video below.