couple and stranger fight off wolf [View all]
The Rispolis were asleep in their tent at the park's Rampart Creek Campground when they were jolted awake after midnight by the wolf.
"It was like something out of a horror movie," Elisa wrote in the Facebook post.
Matt instantly threw himself in front of his wife and the children, fighting the predator as it ripped apart the tent. While her husband was trying to keep the wolf at bay, Elisa wrote that she lay on top of her two boys to shield them. Together, the couple cried out for help.
Luckily, Fee heard them.
When he arrived at the family's campsite, Fee told "Calgary Eyeopener" that he saw the wolf attempting to yank something free of the tent, like it was "pulling on a toy."
"It was big enough that I immediately figured out what it was, which is weird because I've never seen one outside of the zoo," he said. "It was just so much larger than any dog I've ever seen."
Inside the now mostly collapsed dwelling, an intense tug-of-war was unfolding. Elisa wrote that the animal had "started to drag Matt away" and she was holding on to his legs.
"I cannot and don't think I'll ever be able to properly describe the terror," she wrote.
Meanwhile, as Fee ran toward the tent, carrying only the lantern his wife gave him, he devised a hasty plan.
"I just kind of kept running at it and I just kicked it . . . in the back hip area like I was kicking in a door," he said on the radio show. "I booted it as hard as I could."
The kick may not have done much physical damage, but Fee said it was enough to startle the wolf into letting Matt go. Then, the animal emerged from the tent and Fee said he "immediately regretted kicking it."
"I felt like I had kind of punched someone that was way out of my weight class," he said.
But before Fee had to think of another way to take on the wolf solo, he said Matt, whose "whole half side was just covered in blood," came flying out of the tent. The two men began screaming at the wolf and hurling rocks about "the size of a head of cabbage" at the animal to drive it back, Fee said. Soon, the wolf was far enough away that the group was able to flee to Fee's campsite, where they hid in his minivan.
On Facebook, Elisa wrote that her husband was transported to a hospital where the puncture wounds and lacerations on his hands and arms were treated.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Like-a-horror-movie-Camper-saves-family-of-14303149.php