Hello? Germany calling.

Hello? CBS calling from Manhattan.

Hello? The Associated Press calling.

Hello? Drudge on the line here.

Was it a loup-garou? A Chupacabra? Wolf-hybrid? Or a chow gone feral?

We don’t know. And the Warden Service seems oddly alone in its disinterest in the strange-looking animal killed in Turner over the weekend.

“Everybody is mad because the game wardens haven’t come out to take a look at it,” Debi Bodwell told the Sun Journal on Wednesday. Michelle O’Donnell, the woman who first reported the creature’s death, is also baffled.

According to O’Donnell, when she called the Warden Service on Sunday afternoon, she was told that wardens “do more than pick up dead animals” and the agency couldn’t afford the gasoline to send a warden from Poland to Turner.

While we are tremendously sympathetic to the Warden Service’s position, since they must get all kinds of calls about all kinds of wildlife sightings – dead or alive – we have to admit that it’s curious that the state’s wildlife biologists were not more assertive in offering expertise.

It is a curious looking creature to be sure.

We truly doubt the claims that this animal, this creature, is a werewolf.

We doubt even more vigorously that the animal is “not of this earth,” despite some claims to the contrary.

Loren Coleman’s Cryptozoo News site reported the presence of the animal, based on the Sun Journal story, prompting much online discussion.

“Why the fuss?” asks one blogger. “There is nothing mysterious about the poor thing. It was nothing more than a plain canine that was badly crossed, possibly while in the state of neglect under such environment. A detailed DNA analysis would provide the much-needed answer.”

The blogger is right. And, in the absence of any examination and determination of the species from the Maine Warden Service, we have arranged for such a test to be performed by a lab in Toronto.

We’ll know, when the results are in, whether this is a dog, a wolf, a wolf-dog hybrid or a werewolf. Or, as one Cryptozoo News blogger suggests, perhaps a “werewolf mixed with a chow.” And, once we know, we’ll tell you what we’ve learned.

We will solve this mystery, or perhaps open a new one. If there is DNA evidence that this animal is some kind of wolf-hybrid, we may very well have proof that there are wolves in Maine. And, based on the reported sightings of similar creatures across central Maine, we may have to accept there are wolf packs, too.