A surveillance camera of the city of Cologne’s water and electricity supply company has caught a confused wolf wandering around the company’s outdoor facilities.

The wolf appeared on the RheinEnergie AG CCTV’s system after it showed at the company’s property in the Ehrenfeld district in the city of Cologne in Germany at 0:20am on Wednesday (19th May 2021) .

RheinEnergie AG is a subsidiary company that supplies the city of Cologne’s infrastructure and services company (Stadtwerke Koln GmbH) with water, electricity, gas, heat and steam energy.

According to their press release, the animal must have come from the greenway in the north of the city and crossed the boom barrier before it continued towards the company’s premises.

After carefully analysing the video RheinEnergie officials immediately informed the Office for Nature, Environment and Consumer Protection of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (LANUV) and the Federal Wolf Documentation and Advice Center (DBBW) that confirmed the animal is not a wolf-like dog, but a real wolf.

A LANUV spokesperson said on Friday (21st May): “This is extremely rare – but it happens. The wolf, it just walks and then it takes the wrong turn.”

According to local media (TAG24) the wolf was initially filmed by a local woman from the Ehrenfeld district with her mobile phone, close to the city centre on Wednesday evening.

After it was spotted roaming around the city by several locals it ended up on RheinEnergie AG’s property where surveillance cameras caught it walking back and forth in the parking lot, apparently looking for a way out.

Finally, it was noticed while crossing the street in the Weidenpesch district by a car driver an hour later.

LANUV officials suspect the wolf is responsible for slaughtering four sheep in the Rheinaue area on Thursday morning (20th May).

DNA samples of the slaughtered sheep should reveal what happened, and whether it was a wolf.

According to LANUV information, wolves leave their parents after they turn two and sometimes cross several hundreds of miles wandering through unfamiliar terrains to look for a new home.

However, on rare occasions where they end up in cities, it is usually by accident, and they never become permanent residents in German cities unlike foxes and wild boar, according to a LANUV spokesperson.

There are four designated areas for wolves in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia after they were were detected for the first time in 2009.

LANUV could not reveal further information about the wolf’s gender or age or where it went after leaving the city.