For days, a wolflike canine known as Gary roamed Anchorage. But things were not as they seemed.

Last week, Anchorage wildlife photographer Andy Romang had just finished breakfast at Jackie’s Place restaurant when he pulled his car onto Spenard Road and heard a man shouting from the sidewalk.

“Wolf! Wolf!” the man cried, pointing. “It’s a f–king wolf!”

There on Northern Lights Boulevard, one of Anchorage’s busiest roads, was what looked, indeed, like a wolf. Lean and rangy, the animal was a patchy mix of ash and chestnut, with a white muzzle and pale green eyes.

Even for someone who had spent years photographing bears and moose in incongruous Anchorage urban locales, this was extraordinary, Romang said: An apparent lone wolf, trotting through traffic in the direction of Starbucks and Walgreens.

Only things weren’t as they seemed: A few days later, after attracting the attention of hundreds of Anchorage residents for its circumnavigation of the city, the animal was hit and killed by a vehicle. Now a biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game says authorities believe it wasn’t a full wolf at all.

“We don’t believe it’s a wolf,” said Cynthia Wardlow, a regional supervisor with the department. “We don’t believe it’s a wild animal.”

‘I am constantly thinking of Gary’

Last week and over the weekend, the wolflike animal was spotted again and again, all the way from Boniface Road to Oceanview, said Cynthia White, a longtime volunteer who recovers lost pets. White has tracked lost dogs for years and knows how far they can roam when frightened and disoriented. This animal’s range was extraordinary.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” White said.

She started a Facebook group to compile videos, photos and sightings. In two days, it swelled to more than 700 people. The animal was dubbed “Gary” when White, the group administrator, replied to a commenter named Gary and people mistook it as the animal’s name.

The sightings posted in the Gary’s Tour of Anchorage group came from everywhere: Gary spotted loping along Lake Hood Drive in the early morning frost. Gary in the darkness on a Fairview sidewalk. Gary seeming to approach an office building, a reflection in the glass door. Gary by Merrill Field. Gary on the Hillside.

People worried about how the story would end. Would Gary be captured by animal control? Disappear into the wild? How could he survive so many days crisscrossing busy roads? Where had he come from? Where was he going?

People seemed captivated, as they had been with the white raven last winter — a rare leucistic raven whose appearances around Spenard launched espresso drink specials, sweatshirt designs and bumper stickers.

“I am constantly thinking about Gary,” one woman posted.

Then, a sad and sudden end: Early Monday morning, the canine was struck and killed by a vehicle on Minnesota Drive near 26th Avenue, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

First, the body was taken to municipal Animal Care and Control, and then biologists with the state Department of Fish and Game came to examine it, said Cynthia Wardlow, a supervisor with Fish and Game.

Because of public interest, the department plans to do DNA testing to definitively determine the genetic profile of the animal, Wardlow said. It will take several months for results to be available.

“It’s definitely not a full wolf,” Wardlow said. “We’re going to go ahead, because of the great public interest in this animal, and test it to see if it is a wolf hybrid.”

Wolf hybrids are illegal to buy, sell or own in Anchorage, said Logan Robinson, the assistant manager of the Anchorage Animal Care and Control shelter.

“In the event that we receive an animal suspected to be a wolf hybrid, we would immediately contact the Department of Fish and Game,” Robinson said.

The animal was an older female and weighed 67 pounds, Wardlow said. On the Facebook group, some commenters posthumously changed its name to Mary.

Wolves have been in the public eye in Anchorage recently: A retired UAA professor’s trail cameras in Far North Bicentennial Park captured a pack of wolves killing a moose calf last month. Signs have gone up around the Campbell Creek Science Center trails warning of an active wolf pack in the area and instructing walkers to keep their dogs on leashes. Wardlow, with Fish and Game, said she hadn’t heard of any negative human-wolf interactions in that area recently.

In 2017, a lone female wolf that had been intermittently spotted around Anchorage and Eagle River for years was hit and killed by a car in East Anchorage.

For a wolf — or any wild animal — to travel daily down busy major roads would be really unusual, Wardlow said.

“I think this would be described as highly unusual behavior for any wild animal,” she said. “Even living here in Anchorage, where we know that we have bears and moose in town regularly, the odds that you’re going to see them on a daily basis are not high.”

‘No Ms. Gary!’

When White announced to the Gary’s Tour of Anchorage group that the animal had been killed, she posted a poem alongside the news.

“No Ms. Gary!” one person wrote.

“Heartbroken,” another posted. “RIP.”

What was it about the wolf that was not a wolf that captured the imagination of Anchorage briefly?

Living here, there’s always the possibility of having a wild animal in your midst, White said. People are used to that.

But a wolf by the grocery store? On a sidewalk? That would have been something new, even for Anchorage.