"I've never seen so many wolves," said Terry Murphy, who has lived in False Pass on the east side of [Unimak] island off and on since 1985. "When I first moved here, on calm winter nights you'd hear a wolf howling in the hills. We used to luck out once in a while and see one on the hillside, but never in town. Nowadays they come into town, in the daytime, real regular."
Last summer, one took a nap in the sun in Murphy's backyard in broad daylight.
Villagers, fearful for their children, are using VHS radios to track wolves in and around town. Many of the wolves appear to be in poor health, they say.
"If they're that desperate they'll take what they can to survive" said Cindy Beamer, general manager of Isanotski Corp., the area's village corporation. "They're not afraid of the people here. Usually if you see one they'd run."
In March, a schoolteacher was likely killed by wolves outside Chignik Lake on the Alaska Peninsula.
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