The day we almost got mauled by a wolf

Today...my 5 little sheep and I almost got mauled by a wolf.  Why, you might ask, does a wolf live in a city of 6 million people?  I will tell you very straight faced, never ask why.  That is a dangerous question when living overseas.  Just keep it to yourself.

So, the double stroller is weighed down with all things inflatable.  We look like a walking trade show.  One child is crammed in the front seat with his head lodged under a floatie.  An old lady across the street is yelling at me.  She is vigilantly telling me that there is NO way all those children are mine.  When I tell her, a good 8 times, she decides I am lying and scoots across the street to further interrogate my children.  As we are having this friendly little discussion, my peripherals notice a stirring in the bushes.  The very large dog like creature had been resting under the shade of a tree when his curiosity got the best of him and he decided to come our way.  As he stumbled up to where we were, I noticed that this indeed was not a nice domesticated animal, but a mangy, rabbis infested wolf.  His eyes had crusty white circles around them and his mouth was dripping with foam.  Its fur was dark brown and was twisted in knots covering the patches of scars and disease.

Normally, when I see a stray dog, I make a game plan on how best to drop kick it to the next county.  Had I tried to drop kick this thing, it would have taken off my leg.  At this point, the old lady who was grilling me about my family was now screaming and running around like a bee had flown up her shorts.  She wailed in fear for a security guard while another man called the police.  The wolf has now sauntered over to my area.  I grabbed all of my kids and threw them behind the bushes.  I told them to face the wall and don't talk.  Selah was crying, Makaria's face was jammed into the concrete and Kesed was not within arms reach.  I used the stroller to barricade us in and frantically grabbed Kesed to my side.  Earlier, I had been upset with myself for forgetting to bring snacks.  Snacks are always an important pool outing element because it gives me a reason for a fake safety break so that I can get warm.  Mr. Wolf is now sniffing in our stroller looking for food.  Thank you Jesus I'm so disorganized!  There was no food to be found.

After circling in our area for a few minutes, he galloped over to the old lady.  She had dropped her bag of groceries and he was now tearing into it.  Now old lady is not just scared, she is ticked.  If there's one thing you need to know about Chinese grandmothers is that buying groceries is no laughing matter.  They take it VERY seriously and now big wolf man is eating her fish, meat and plastic bags.  She is now crying, stomping her legs and yelling at the wolf to stop eating her dumplings.

As he began in on her bag, I saw an opportunity to get my kids out of there.  I whispered to them "GO, GO, GO."  There was a fence about 50 feet away and I knew that if we could reach that then we would be safe. Albeit for a much less valiant cause, I did feel a bit like Harriet Tubman smuggling slaves in the cloak of night. I was pushing the stroller in one hand and had a child dangling in my other hand and running towards the fence.  Once we finally reached the safety zone, we felt relief as if we'd just crossed the border into a freed man's territory.

The kids and I were all visibly shaking.  By that point, about 10 security guards had come and were trying to solve the little wolf issue.  But not even policemen carry guns here, so I'm not sure what they were going to do with this thing.  All I know is that we are all safe.

*as a side note, this internet picture of a wolf doesn't even come close to the size of that huge thing we encountered this morning.