IT'S not often one sees a pack of Canadian timber wolves wandering unaccompanied along a Yorkshire country road. Unlikely though it is, that was my experience in the early hours of one morning while a village constable in Ryedale.

I was undertaking a night patrol over a large area and was comfortable in a radio equipped car. I was surprised when my headlights picked out reflections in the yellow eyes of some animals on the road ahead. At the same instant they moved quickly into the side of the road and took refuge in a bus shelter. I halted and my headlights held them there.

There was half a dozen and they crowded into that shelter clearly terrified of my lights and probably upset at the noise of the car. For a very brief moment I thought they were Alsatians but soon realised they weren’t – I had found a pack of Canadian timber wolves wandering around the English countryside and it was about three o’clock in the morning.

So what could I do? I did not know whether they were dangerous and had no means of containing them apart from the presence of the car.

Certainly, I was not going to get out of the car to interrogate them but fortunately police cars were equipped with radio. And, as I was near Pickering, I guessed they must have escaped from Flamingo Park Zoo as it was then called. I radioed force headquarters and asked them to contact the night duty supervisor at Flamingo Park Zoo to tell him that their wolves had escaped. I gave the location but had no guarantee these rather timid animals would remain there, nor indeed whether in fact they were on the run from Flamingo Park.

Happily they were content to crowd into the shelter and remain there as my headlights beamed and immobilised them. No other cars came that way, and eventually a wolf-carrier arrived along with two men and a net. With surprising speed and skill, the escapees were shepherded into the vehicle and driven back home. The next time I saw them, they were behind wire at the zoo and no worse for their experience. And neither was I.

Wolves do run wild in many countries including parts of the US, France, the Ukraine, Northern India, Sweden, Alaska and probably many others. In addition, recent years have witnessed suggestions that wolves should be re-introduced to the wild in Scotland and England. Although wolves are now maintained in secure parklands and zoos in this country, the idea of having them free to roam in the wild, however remote the locality, is guaranteed to cause alarm.

To claim they would be totally secure cannot be guaranteed and most of us know how creatures such as mink and grey squirrels have spread in the wild in this country.

Some ten years ago, Sweden had problems with its wild wolves. After almost dying out during the 1970s, they replenished their numbers to such an extent that culls became necessary. Wolves were roaming into towns and villages to attack farm animals and pets and so, in 2009, the Swedish authorities authorised the hunting of wolves.

Evidence of their presence running wild in this country is provided by the names of some locations. One example is Wolf Pit Slack on the North York Moors, between Danby and Little Fryup, which was thought to have been a route used by wolves. Certainly they were hunted in the past.

It was the practice for the lord of the manor to recruit local people to hunt the wolves with beaters being mustered from the villages. A line of beaters would stretch across the moors, at times up to five miles long, and this was flanked on higher ground by a second group. A third group would stand behind the wolf pit with weapons and nets, the objective being to drive the animals into the pit (usually a natural feature), and there they would be killed. Sometimes deep ditches were dug for this purpose. In the 14th century, land rents were paid with wolves’ heads and at one time, a criminal could be freed by producing a specified number of wolves’ heads.

Our Saxon ancestors were very afraid of wolves and made strenuous efforts to eradicate them. They named the month of January Wulfmonath (the month of the wolf) for this was when it was at its most dangerous. Hunger drove wolves to attack cattle and even children and an old saying warned that “When several wolves appear together, it is not a society of peace, but of war. It is attended with tumult and dreadful prowlings and indicates an attack on some large animal”.

However, it was not the trapping of wolves that helped to eradicate them from England. It was the invention of the firearm which led to their extinction in the wild in this country. However, Yorkshire’s wild acres supported wolves later than any other English county, with hunting ending around the 14th century. At Flixton in the East Riding, a special wolf-proof shelter was built “to defend passengers against wolves lest they be devoured by them”.

The precise date when the last wolf ran wild in this country is uncertain. One is recorded as being caught in Cheshire in 1509 but they are generally thought to have been made extinct further north between 1650 and 1700. Some accounts suggest the last wild wolf was killed in the Lake District in 1680, while another was killed in Scotland in 1743, reputedly the last wild wolf in Britain. I have a note that one was shot in Scarborough in 1969, but that was an escapee!

Jumbo tale

Other strange animals to be seen in this region were elephants. There is an enduring but doubtful story that involves the Maharajah Duleep Singh. He was exiled from India in 1849 and came to England where he leased Mulgrave Castle at Lythe, near Sandsend, Whitby. He remained at the castle for four years and was known for hawking on the moors while in his oriental dress. Two Indians cared for the hawks, as well as six English gamekeepers in red uniforms.

At the time there was no coast road between Sandsend and Whitby and so the Maharajah arranged for one to be constructed. He did so because he claimed his elephants did not like walking on the sandy beach. There are doubts about the veracity of the elephant story but before the road was built, local people would use the beach as a road between Whitby and Sandsend.

I have come across a story that a Whitby man who died in 1920 could remember a coach and four horses being driven along the beach to attend a wedding at Whitby. So there may be some truth in the elephant story.