Walter Eikrem listened to music on his mobile phone as he often does as he made his way home from school in the southern Norwegian town of Rakkestad. The path leading from the stop where he catches the school bus to his family's farmhouse traverses a gently sloping hillside. All of a sudden, he made out something grey on the hillside. "At first, I thought it might have been the neighbor's dogs," he later said. What he actually encountered, though, were four wolves.
"I was afraid they would attack me," Walter said describing the incident, which took place on Monday. But he didn't let his fear show. Remembering his parents' advice, Walter pulled the earphones out of his mobile phone, turned the volume all the way up and blasted heavy metal music over its miniature speakers. At the same time, he yelled as loud as he could while flailing his arms about wildly to scare off the pack of wild animals.
"The worst thing you can do is run away because doing so just invites the wolves to chase you down," Walter said. "But I was so afraid that I couldn't even run away if I'd wanted to." The plan worked. Eikrem said he was able to drive away the wolves by playing the song "Overcome" by the American hard-rock band Creed. "They didn't really get scared," Walter said. "They just turned around and simply trotted away."
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