Seventeen-year-old musher Melissa Owens was a mile into a training run last week in Nome when she saw a musk ox standing on the left side of the road. She stopped her dogs so the woolly beast could cross to the other side.
"Then all of a sudden the bushes come alive, and I think, ohhh, this can't be good," Owens said. "There's more musk ox in there, isn't there?"
Sixteen more, to be precise. Just yards away from 23 huskies, including two young and curious leaders.
"The dogs see them and say, 'Oh yay, buddies! Let's go check them out!' " Owens said.
At first, it looked like the herd wasn't interested in the dogs. The animals milled around a bit and then headed up a hill toward Nome's old Army hospital. Owens, behind the wheel of the truck her dogs were pulling, inched her team forward.
And then?
"Chaos takes place," Owens said.
Shy Girl and Kiwi, the young leaders, veered to the right, provoking the musk ox and setting off the first of three charges.
Heather Williams, sitting next to Owens in the truck, leaned out the window with a camera and snapped one of the most unbelievable photos you'll ever see: A herd of hulking musk ox headed straight toward 23 dogs harnessed to a gangline and tangled in a knot.
"I remember them stomping and snorting and grunting and stuff, and I remember the dogs barking," Owens said. "They were almost nose-to-nose. The big bull charged them and the dogs did exactly what you see in the photo."
Shy Girl and Kiwi turned tail, leaving the rest of the team in a snarl. The two dogs behind them -- including Anvik, the leader of Owens' 2005 Junior Iditarod victory -- went right at one of the musk ox.
Owens said the herd retreated briefly and then charged again. "I believe the knot of dogs offended them," she said.
Owens hollered for Williams, a 21-year-old who moved to Alaska about 18 months ago, to get out of the truck and help unclip the dogs and put them in the back of the truck.
"You want me to do what?" Owens remembered Williams saying. "You want me to get out there with these b-b-b-beasts?"
CAMERA CAME IN HANDY
Before she got out of the truck, Williams took a couple of pictures with the digital camera she takes whenever she joins Owens on a training run.
"I just happened to have the camera in my hand,'' she said.
Williams took a picture when she saw the lone musk ox, and then when the whole herd emerged and charged the dogs, she took one more shot before jumping out to help the dogs.
"After I took it I said, 'If this is blurry, I'm not going back to get another one,' " she said.
Owens and Williams freed about six dogs after the second charge. During the third charge, they grabbed the gangline and pulled the team to the side of the truck. The musk ox finally gave up.
"It's a miracle they didn't charge the truck," Owens said.
An even bigger miracle: None of the dogs was injured.
"Nobody seems sore, and there was no blood," Owens said Friday, five days after the encounter.
Owens showed the picture to her mom, who thought it was a painting. Williams showed it to a co-worker, who thought it was two photos put together. Owens e-mailed it to Jeff Schultz, the official photographer for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, who at first thought it might be fake. Then he remembered who he was dealing with.
"I know it's real because I asked Melissa, and know her character," he said.
The daughter of two-time Iditarod finisher Mike Owens of Nome, Melissa won the 2005 Junior Iditarod and placed fifth last year. She turns 18 two weeks before next year's Iditarod and will be one of the youngest mushers in history to take on the 1,100-mile race from Anchorage to Nome.
Certainly she'll have one of the most astonishing training stories to tell when she lines up on Fourth Avenue in March.
Owens laughs to think people might challenge the photo or her story.
"I would never even want to dream this up," she said. "It's by the glory of God that we're still alive and I didn't spend the day in the emergency room or the vet's office."
