Postcards in the Air : BIG, BAD WOLVES

A movement out of the bushes in our backyard in Danville caught my eye. I smiled, because the jackrabbit was back. He had been visiting our yard for the last couple of years in spring. Any glimpse of wildlife sends a shiver of connection through me. I thank the jackrabbit for letting me see him/her. It bounds away through the wrought iron gate and out into our front yard. (Jackrabbits can reach speeds of 40 miles per hour and it is hard to tell if they are male or female.) Sometimes the jackrabbit would flop down on the front yard grass and survey the neighborhood. Other times, it would zoom up the street.

One of the pleasures in living near open space was the chance to see wildlife. Plenty of deer, hawks, crows, quail, and squirrels visited our backyard and we could hear the coyotes howl at night. That is one thing I miss about being in the city, though in local parks we come upon signs warning of coyote sightings and read the news of a mountain lion trapped in a tree near Golden Gate Park (who disappeared during the night safely). Along with wonderment comes a small bit of fear. I think of the old tales, myths, and fables about animals such as coyotes, hares, wolves, and black cats.

Remember the childhood song, "Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?" Or what about seeing a black cat cross your path? Or do you remember the stories of that trickster, Br'er Rabbit (really a hare) or the mad March Hare from Alice in Wonderland? All over the world, people created myths and stories about these animals based on superstition about their behavior. Hares are often considered shapeshifters turning hares into witches in stories. Black cats were considered witches' familiars and suffered the same fate as the women accused of witchcraft. Both cats and hares share opposing story lines, sometimes representing good as in Ancient Egypt and in Japan, other times considered something evil. Black cats are still the least likely to be adopted at shelters. Europeans were so terrorized by the thought of wolves (read The Interlopers by H.H. Munro/Saki) that when they immigrated to the Americas they decimated the wolf populations that may have numbered as many as two million wolves before the Europeans arrived. Today there are about 14,000 to 18,000 in a much reduced range in the U. S.

Wolves are one of the Keystone animals

While we were in Colorado last week, we toured the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center never Divide, which provides homes for rescued wolves, wolf dogs, coyotes and foxes. None of the animals there have lived in the wild so they can't be released. They live at the center with a partner in large fenced-off areas, not as large as their normal 35-mile range as hunters, but still large enough that during the day they can disappear into the landscape. Mid-day while we were there, the wolves, foxes and coyotes rested, and we had to hunt to find them since their fur helped them blend into their surroundings.

The Center originally opened to provide homes for wolf dogs that had been turned in at animal shelters when their human "owners" could no longer handle them. The shelters won't adopt them out and they would be euthanized quickly. The other animals at the Center came mostly from zoos or as rescued wild "pets."

We walked with a tour guide around the campus, checking each penned area for a sighting. The white Arctic wolves were the most active, stretching and walking around. The Mexican wolves were timid, reflecting, perhaps, their small numbers left (320+) in the United States. At the end of the tour, one grey wolf walked around the edges of its pen. Our guide directed us to be very still and then to howl in unison in hopes that the wolves would respond. The first time our group howled, only the grey wolf howled with us. Another try, and wolves from other areas of the Center joined in. The howls reminded me our stays on a Minnesota lake, where at twilight, we could hear both the loon's cry and the wolf howl in the marshes near the lake. There is something magical about hearing a wild animal's call that stirs my imagination and make me want to write a story about them.

My sister-in-law, a former teacher, developed a wonderful exercise with her students. She would ask them to re-write fairy tales from the viewpoint of the Big, Bad Wolf, or the March Hare, building empathy along the way. How would you retell the story of Little Red Riding Hood or Belling the Cat, making the wolf or cat the sympathetic, less threatening character of a story?

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The Trump administration is considering removing wolves from the Endangered Species Act. Without this protection, wolf populations will once again decline to a critical number. Wolves are Keystone animals, an important animal to keep other animals such as elk in check so they don't over-populate and over-graze an area. I admit that wolves are a problem for ranchers and herders because free-range cattle have been bred so they no longer have horns and can no longer defend themselves as well as an elk or moose can. Strikes from hoofs and horns can cause wolf fatalities. Both Federal and State agencies help ranchers with wolf-predator management, but like black cats, the stigma attached to wolves doesn't go away easily.