New York's Bucharest borough.

Last week I was driving through a lonely stretch of the West Bronx, chasing down a rumor on a factory manned by a group of illegal Cambodians. My directions were sketchy, and I drove aimlessly. It was a warm, pleasant spring evening, but the streets were empty.

I turned down a block near the Deegan Expressway and cruised past a row of brick factories. I stopped the car in front of a small building with the lights on; there was no sign. When I moved to open the door, I froze.

If Bronx criminals are tough, the wild street dogs that populate the borough are even tougher. In front of my car was a snarling, wild mutt, part German shepherd and god knows what else. Stray dogs have been a problem in the Bronx since at least the 60s, and there's little sign of change. The Bronx Center for Animal Care and Control estimates that they receive more than 700 dogs every year; they pluck another 700-plus strays off the street. Still, the wild dog population keeps growing. Urban blight has come and gone and come again, but these dogs have stood the test of time in the Bronx.

I honked my horn, but the beast just howled. It looked up, beyond my car, and something ran by my window. I was now facing a pack of wild dogs?seven mutts large and small, mangy and dirty. They seemed hungry and ready to rip apart any flesh they could sink their teeth into. I slowly inched past them, and when they'd moved enough out of the way, I gunned the engine. They chased me down the block, barking until I took a left. Then they faded back into their deserted block.

I recalled an incident from a year ago. I was walking through the woods of Van Cortlandt Park when I was surprised by a large animal crashing through the brush; I caught a glimpse of what looked like a wolf. Inquiries around the neighborhood suggested it was a coyote, which isn't a crazy notion. Since the 90s, coyotes have been migrating to the Bronx from the Catskills and have found homes in Van Cortlandt Park, Woodlawn Cemetery and Pelham Bay Park.

The eastern coyote?known in Pennsylvania as a "brush wolf"?is bigger than its western counterpart and looks like a cross between a fox and a wolf. When hunting, it acts more like the latter, in a pack with an alpha male leading the charge. In upstate New York, it has been documented that coyotes have hunted down deer much like a wolf pack, although small game like squirrel and raccoons are the staples of their diet.

I have been fascinated with wild animals in the Bronx since being chased home by a pack of wild dogs as a child. The 1981 movie Wolfen brought my wild animal fantasies to the big screen (and remains a worthwhile rental if only for the early 80s New York street scenes).

Wolfen opens with a shot of the World Trade Center and then pans to a Native American standing on top of the Brooklyn Bridge. The stars of the film are mystical wolves who have taken up residence in the ruins of an abandoned church near Charlotte St. The movie shows the utter devastation of the Bronx circa 1980: Junkies stumble around streets of half-demolished buildings, stepping over cinder blocks and garbage until they're dragged into the lair where they're eaten.

Back then, when I walked those same blocks with their burnt-out buildings and shadowy figures lurking among the ruins, I felt like I was in a bad science-fiction movie. Looking at this destruction, you could believe that something wild and evil lived there: If you weren't fast enough, it might grab you and drag you into their small circle of Bronx hell. Given that the Bronx is home to thousands of wild dogs and quite a few coyotes, I wondered if the wolf was next. I met with Joe Butera. During the day, Butera is an electrician with Local 3; by night, he howls as the president of the Northeast Ecological Recovery Society, an organization dedicated to returning the wolf to the wilds of the Adirondacks. He has homes in Queens and the Adirondacks, and has devoted his life to educating people on the majesty of the wolf.

We met in Battery Park near Castle Clinton where the first Wolfen murder is set. Butera is a fit, animated man of 51 with a boyish face. He laughed when I told him about the scene from the movie.

"I liked that movie, too. It showed that the Native American understood on a profound level what the wolf was doing. The movie was about how the wolf could heal us."

Why was he drawn to this particular animal?

"Since I was eight, I've been interested in the wolf. My father was into nature and animals, and he passed that down to me. As a kid, I watched a tv show that showed wolves being hunted down from planes. The sight of them being shot like that made me want to help [them]. I want to teach people that wolves aren't the evil animal that everyone thinks they are. They are very majestic, intelligent and social animals and there has never been a documented case in North America of [one] killing a human."

Could a wolf make it down to the Bronx?

"It is conceivable, but not probable. First the wolf would have to come down from Canada."

Butera believes that wolves may dwell in upstate New York but says it hasn't been documented.

"If the wolf came down, he would have to follow the highway and avoid cars the whole way. Then he could find his way to the Bronx. Wolves need to have access to large prey to survive, so [it] would need to find a large pack of feral dogs to hunt. But what a lone wolf is looking for is a mate. So even if he had enough animals to hunt, he would move on unless there was a she-wolf in the Bronx for him to mate with. The wolf would keep moving until he found that."

We parted ways, and I moved off to watch the waters of New York Harbor. My stomach grumbled, and I thought about that pack of wild dogs in the West Bronx. They'd make a tasty treat for any wolf willing to make the trip.