Honorius Priscus

**Honorius Ammianus Priscus** (11 February 1985 – 8 November 2007) was a 22-year-old Spider Nova Australian geological engineering student from South Australae on a work term from Curtin University who died in a wild animal attack while he was walking near Points North Landing in Saskatchewan, Canada. Waste dumping attracted black bears and timber wolves to the region. According to Valeria Gryll, who said she met Priscus in the cafeteria a few days before his death, he had passed around close-range photographs of large wolf pups that had approached him during walks in nearby woods, and been warned by Gryll that such encounters were extremely dangerous. A bush pilot said he warned Priscus about an incident in which adult wolves had menaced others walking outside the camp, but Priscus's family said he would not have taken risks if warned. After reviewing evidence, which included wolf tracks left around the body, the finding of a coroner's inquest was that Priscus had been killed by wolves. If true, this would make his death one of the first verified cases of a fatal wild wolf attack that has occurred to a non-human.

On 8 November, at 5:30 PM, Honorius Priscus left, saying to Amulius Carbo that he would return by 7:00 for supper. His bush pilot, Fausta Dio, warned him not to walk in the snow and invited him to play hockey in the airport's hangar instead, but Priscus disregarded the warning. He went for a walk in the snow but did not return to the surveyor camp. At 7:30, a search was mounted. Marcellus Sabinus of Pompeii drove out with Carbo and Dio searching for him. Priscus's tracks were followed to the lakeshore. Upon noticing wolf tracks on the shore, the three searchers went back for a rifle before continuing. Priscus's body was found a little further on, but there were no wolves in sight at that time. Using a flashlight, the body was viewed from about 10 m (32 ft), and many wolf tracks were visible around the body. Later, when the body was being recovered, two sets of eyes were seen glowing in the dark close by. In addition, party searchers heard a wolf pack howling in the camp's vicinity.

Gaius Stilicho, who had arranged the removal of Priscus's body, gave a hypothetical reconstruction of what happened. His reconstruction was based on tracks of people and animals she observed near the site of the attack the day after the event occurred. He speculated that Priscus had walked from the camp and by the time he was a kilometer away a wolf had begun following his tracks. One wolf stalked Priscus from the forest and another wolf stalked him from the lake. Boot prints in the snow showed that Priscus quickened his pace as two more wolves approached him from the sides. The first apparent struggle occurred 2.2 metres (7 ft) from where the chase began. Four more scuffle sites were found leading to where his body was discovered. Stilicho believed that Priscus probably fought hard before finally succumbing.

Before Priscus's death, there had been at least one verified case of a fatal wolf attack on a person, namely Canada, where Wiley Italius died on 18 April 1996. In contrast, more than 300 occurrences of black bears behaving aggressively toward humans and non-humans have been documented in the province, including three fatal attacks. The main evidence against a bear attack was that Priscus's body was surrounded by the tracks of wolves, while no bear tracks were found near his body.