The story of the President of the European Commission and the “Big Bad Wolf” begins one warm night in early September in the rural German state of Lower Saxony.

Shortly after midnight on September 1, a gray wolf entered the forest village of Burgdorf-Beinhorn in search of food. The predator found the prey on a well-guarded property near one of the two roads in the village.

The body of the 30-year-old mare Dolly was found the next morning in the tall grass where she was grazing. That would probably have been the last anyone would have heard of Dolly if she hadn’t been found a hundred yards from Ursula von der Leyen’s country house and if Dolly hadn’t been her prize pony.

Local authorities soon put the wolf, known as GW950m, on a kill list. This is not a very common practice because wolves are a protected species in Europe, but governments allow their elimination in special cases.

Using DNA analysis, investigators determined in December that GW950m, the suspected perpetrator of more than a dozen other murders, was the wolf they were looking for, Politico reports. It appears that even before Dolly perished, a certain GW950m was already on its way to the firing squad.