Nick Jans was outside their home in Juneau, Alaska, with his wife Sherrie and Labrador Retriever Dakotah, when they saw the stunning black wolf. The wolf was about two years old, not fully grown.
Dakotah ran out to meet the new comer without reservation, and the Jans’s were forced to watch what would happen next.
The two squared off….and, as Nick puts it on his website, the wolf stood there “totally relaxed with us standing there just a few feet away, shamelessly flirting with our dog, who’s pretty relaxed herself.”
Being a photographer, Nick had his camera with him and snapped a picture – so he would have proof.
It’s like White Fang, I said.
Nick candidly responded, “A Far as White Fang goes…well Jack London made his story up.”
Even then, it’s hard to believe.
“Even with a picture to prove it really happened, this moment, and the years that followed, living near a wild, sociable and strangely gentle wolf, with a glacier-draped mountain backdrop, seem unreal, like something we dreamed, or a film we were watching,” Nick writes on his site.
That wasn’t the last encounter with the wolf, whom Nick named Romeo.
Romeo became a usual site in Juneau – often being spotted around dogs and people. He would play with dogs and even people from time to time; bringing them trash he would find to play fetch.
“He might as well have been a unicorn, or a character straight out of a Disney nature film,” Nick explains. “I mean, a 120-pound wild wolf just shows up one day, and wants to play with our dogs, and is tolerant of people in general, and even friendly to some.”
Unfortunately, Romeo has since passed on, the victim of heartless hunters. Juneau will be forever changed by him, however. Two streets were named after him, a bar (Romeo’s Tap Room), as well as a coffee and a beer.
The town also held a memorial for him and had a special plaque made in his honor.
As for Nick Jans, he was changed too. He wrote a book, A Wolf Called Romeo, so that Romeo would live on and be remembered.
“My final reason for writing this book is to bear witness to the life of this one remarkable wolf,” Nick says. “As long as a single person reads, hears, or remembers his story, Romeo lives. Perhaps that’s what matters most of all.”
You can purchase his book on his website, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.
