Published in the Chicago Daily Tribune on 12/29/1880.
A Wild Animal Afflicted With Hydrophobia Creates Consternation in Christian County.
Correspondence St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
    Reed’s Springs, Christian Co., Mo., Dec. 24.- On the evening of the 20th, while Mr. Carroll was walking home along the highway, about three miles below this place, on Bear Creek, he encountered a huge grey wolf. The animal rushed at him furiously, and was with difficulty frightened off. In front of the dwelling of Charles Lewis, a few hundred yards further up the creek, the beast attacked and killed a large hog. At Sam Gideon’s place a mile further on, the wolf slaughtered a hound and then continued up the public road by Reno Springs and through the woods, next being heard of at William Brown’s residence, on the Springfield pike, two miles north of Reno. Here the ferocious brute entered the yard and attacked the house-dog. Supposing that a strange dog was doing the fighting, Mr. Brown emerged from the house to drive the intruder away, when it rushed at him, and, discovering his mistake in time, Brown retired inside his domicile, making the door fast after him. The wolf, after snapping viciously at the shutters half a dozen times, made for the sheep lot, killed one of its occupants, and then moved 400 yards up the road to Steve Bilgen’s, where it attacked his hounds, injuring one dog so severely that it soon died. Mrs. Bilgen ran out of the house to drive away what she, like Brown, believed to be a strange dog. The wolf promptly attacked the woman, who, aided by a brave mastiff, barely succeeded in reaching a place of safety. Retreating from Steve’s, the wild animal passed on to Ike Bilgen’s, a mile and a half up the road, where it went into the kitchen, and, after upsetting everything capsizable with which it came in contact, deserted that place and proceeded to the house of another member of the Bilgen family [Martin], about a mile from Ike’s. There the wolf, after killing four geese, was attacked by the dogs on the premises, and while a desperate fight was in progress Mr. Bilgen succeeded in emptying the contents of his double-barreled shotgun into the brutes vitals. The animal was the largest of its species ever seen, its frame was very much emaciated, and as it did not attempt to feed on either the dog, sheep, or geese that it killed, it is supposed to have been suffering from hydrophobia. Luckily no human being was bitten by the mad animal, and all the dogs and stock known to have suffered have since been kept in close confinement under careful treatment. Your correspondent neglected to state that at Mr. Ike Bilgen’s a large milch cow was attacked by the infuriated and crazed beast. Where it came from remains a mystery, as no wolf of the grey species has been in this country for several years.
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