I glide down Palace Avenue on my bike, enjoying the quiet of our tourist town on a February afternoon. I dodge ice and potholes, spin the pedals past ancient adobes turned upscale galleries, and when I arrive at the Plaza, I see something I never thought I'd see in this quasi-civilized place.

A man sitting on a park bench with a wolf attached to his head. An honest to goodness wolf. It's got its claws wrapped around that man's head in some kind of stranglehold. I think it jumped him from the trees or from the music pavilion. It's sinking its canines into his nose. It's furry tail is writhing in the wind. Or in the throes of its vicious man-eating attack.

And no one else seems to notice. It's the Twilight Zone, man, so I play it cool too. Not wanting any critters jumping on my head.

My mind is racing like the wheels of my bicycle. I'm pedaling faster. Occasionally a mountain lion meanders down from the mountains, terrifyies the neighborhood, and gets his photo on page one of The Santa Fe New Mexican. Faster. But I've never heard anything about marauding wolves. Especially of the lone variety. Don't they normally travel in packs?

Faster.

I wish that hadn't occurred to me, and I'm suddenly surveying the storefronts for potential predator hiding places. But all I see is a nervous looking forty-something-year-old woman pumping the pedals across the glass panes.

I know I should help the guy. Do something to rescue a fellow human being from a varmint. (Or his own skewed fashion sense, to say the least.) But after my recent brush with this, I suspect I'm being followed, or witnessing an alarming trend in Northern New Mexico. (Which could be very bad for tourism, by the way.)

I tell myself I'm the mom of two kids who need me and get the hell out of there.