Camper Wakes With Head in Wolf's Jaws

A Minnesota teen says he won't be going camping again for a while after surviving the first known wolf attack on a human in state history. Noah Graham, 16, awoke before dawn to find his head gripped in the jaws of a 75-pound gray wolf. "I had to reach behind me and jerk my head out of its mouth," he tells the Bemidji Pioneer. "After I got up, I was kicking at it and screaming at it and it wouldn’t leave. But then after awhile I got it to run away."

Noah needed 17 staples to close a wound in his head and is receiving anti-rabies shots. Police later shot and killed a wolf believed to have been the culprit. Experts have offered several reasons for the unprecedented attack, CBS reports. The wolf had a deformed jaw which would have made it hard to go after large prey, it may have become accustomed to scavenging for food at the campground, and Noah's reddish-brown hair may have caused the wolf to mistake his head for a smaller creature. (More gray wolf stories.)