Conscious Choice: Wolves at My Door

August 2000

Wolves at My Door

The saga of three wildlings on their troubled way home

by Tamarack Song

"Stop right there!" barked Jeff Pagel as he leveled his shotgun over the hood of his truck at the dozen or so armed deer hunters making their determined way up his driveway. Minutes before, at the bar down the road, the men had convinced themselves they’d better go deal with those wolves in the pens behind Jeff’s barn. Otherwise the wolves might escape and start killing dogs and deer, maybe even attack their children.

Linda, Jeff’s wife, stood transfixed at the living room window, unable to grasp what possessed her normally gentle husband. The hunters stopped and looked at each other. A few cans of courage had gotten them this far. Now what?

"One more step is all you’ve got." Jeff’s voice was calm and dead serious. And sobering. Resolve broken and leadership confused, they retreated.

Back at the bar, the hunters decided to call the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Linda had already called the police. Within a half hour two wardens and three police officers were standing with Jeff in his driveway, stressing the volume and intensity of complaints from the neighborhood. The situation, the officials felt, created a risk to public safety. They insisted, for the sake of both the wolves and the people involved, that the wolves be taken under the jurisdiction of the DNR.

Long ago, I became entranced with wilderness, with the wolf as its mystic symbol. I read about wolves, dreamed about wolves, wanted to live with wolves. Wolves were my alter-ego; their social awareness, their attunement to their surroundings, and their ability to live by their feelings were my envy and inspiration. Wolf Spirit was intrinsic to my Native spirituality. I felt Wolf running with me through the forest, even though there were no longer any wolves in the region.

Then one night while camped on the high bank of a wilderness stream, I heard a lone howl. I listened; I did some tracking; I studied the kills and the scat: there was only one. I decided I would help reintroduce this wolf to my beloved Northwoods. I envisioned doing for "my" wolf what the International Crane Foundation (a research, education, and endangered crane breeding center in Baraboo, Wisconsin) did for cranes. I would construct a large enclosed natural wolf habitat similar to Busch Gardens or the San Diego Wild Animal Park. I already owned a square mile of near-wilderness in northern Wisconsin, so I immediately began research into developing a wolf center.

Shortly thereafter, a friend who knew of my plans told me that a pair of wolves he had seen at a little roadside zoo up north had just had a litter of pups. I went to see them.

The place had the patina of sagging revenues: the gift shop that served as the entrance to the zoo was stocked with dusty, outdated merchandise, and the animal cages beyond, though clean and adequate, were patchworks of mismatched wire. There in each enclosure I met one or two cage-weary specimens of each of the typical animals of the Wisconsin Northwoods: porcupine, beaver, deer, snapping turtle, fox. And a pair of wolves.

They were scruffy looking. The haggard female lay at the front of a small pen. Her expressionless mate stood beside her as though on guard. According to their keepers, the pair was captured and caged years ago so that the producers of a popular wild animal TV show could film the timber wolves’ breeding cycle. (As a child I had wondered how that amazing close-up footage was taken.) When the crew was through, they sold the pair to this struggling tourist wayside. They may have been the last breeding pair in Wisconsin and Michigan.

In the bathtub of the proprietors’ house I was shown four wolf pups, eleven days old with eyes still shut. The pups had just been "removed" from their parents the night before (which probably explained why the pair looked as they did), and they had already been adopted by the two teenage daughters. Blue ribbon bows adorned the pup’s necks and they were being lovingly bottle fed — testament to their cuteness as pups, and a good example of why wild animals often find themselves dressed up as pets.

The image of those still-blind wildings someday existing numbly behind bars like their parents drove me to decision: I had to rescue them. I wasn’t ready, I didn’t have the facilities or the time, but these wolf pups were here now, and they needed help. I paid $400 for the litter. On the drive home I could hardly contain my excitement. Two weeks later I could hardly contain my frustration. Four constantly hungry pups and no time to adequately tend either them or the rest of my life brought me solidly back to reality.

I advertised to sell three of the pups. I found an urbanite who wanted one for a guard dog, and a puppy mill owner who wanted a male to produce wolf-dog hybrids. And then I found three people who understood wolves and seemed to have the time and space to honor them. Simbut (short for Simbut Meaxtkao, "Silver Wolf" in Mahican), a lanky inquisitive female, stayed with me. Within the year two of them were back with me — Wolfie, the sleek, agile male counterpart of Simbut, who became pack leader, and Deshum Nashak ("Earth Thunderer"), a big gentle teddy bear who half again outweighed his brother. Their owners had discovered that wolves are not wild dogs, any more than dogs are domestic wolves.

Wolves live in a separate reality, a world incompatible with civilization. They are too sensitive to our noises, too impulsive for our structure, too much the wanderer for our confines. A wolf in captivity does not act like a wild wolf — calm, centered. It becomes neurotic, compulsive, and forlorn. Without a lot of space to stretch out a captive wolf is prone to slip into what I call "cage gaze" — a transfixed look accompanied by either pacing or complete resignation. Because of my unpreparedness, even Simbut spent much of her first year boarded in a kennel. She was spared the scars of "cage gaze" only because we went for long hikes together during that time and because she had spent her first several months outside a cage.

I wanted to incorporate all I had learned in the care of Simbut and her brothers. But I began to question whether a wolf raised in a cage was still a wolf. To be a wolf is to be at one with the forest, to be in communion with fellow wolves. This is learned behavior, gained from experience and the cumulative wisdom passed down from wolf elders. That wisdom is unavailable to a wolf raised in captivity. A captive wolf risks becoming a creature with innate sensitivities, blind urges and abstract visions. She is like an actor driven from deep within to perform but having no script, no voice, no training, no awareness that a stage exists. In order to honor my pledge I had to provide that script, that training, that stage.

I contracted to fence in the wooded acreage behind my house, bringing the pen right up to my door so that I could be an integral part of the wolves’ lives. They would be kept together so they could develop pack structure. They would eat wild food, live when possible, so they could learn to hunt. They would raise their own pups, so their knowledge could be passed down and they could know the fulfillment of family.

Simbut’s first pups were born inside the garage. To make her nest, she had scraped the cold concrete floor bare of sand. By the time I discovered what had happened, three pups were already dead. I brought the fourth inside to try to save him, but no amount of warming or feeding would slow his convulsions. The vet wouldn’t see him — it was after hours.

I sealed off the garage den, and the next spring instinct took over. Several days before the birth Simbut dug a den under a downed tree; I crawled in with her and watched the birth of three beautiful charcoal pups.

I became their playmate and they became my teachers. Unlike my sled dog pups, who would get totally lost in playing with me, the wolf pups maintained a sense of autonomy and perspective that indicated another dimension to our play. At first I thought they were acting aloof because they were wolves and I was not. That turned out not to be the case, the pups interacted with each other in the same manner.

They would study each other intently, their games of chase and tag getting longer and more complex as they grew. Soon they were anticipating each others’ moves, a skill I call "shadowing." They were getting so good at it that it looked as though there was not going to be much sport to the game anymore.

Then their shadowing took on another level of complexity — the chased began skipping their next planned move to throw the chaser off kilter. The chasers did similarly: Anticipating the next maneuver of the chased, they would not directly follow their quarry but cut over to surprise them where their attempted trick would take them. Sometimes two would gang up on the other, at first moving synchronously, then learning to split up to block escape routes.

I joined in, but they were much more clever than I. In short order they had me flawlessly shadowed. When I no longer felt them at my heels, I knew they were going to be waiting for me right where my supposedly deceptive dodgings were taking me. It dawned on me one day that these pups were, of course, in training for the hunt! Their "play" was exactly what I had observed of hunting behavior in the wilds! I realized that I, as a pack member, could guide them after their release to hunt wild animals and establish a territory. This was the break I had been waiting for, the first real confirmation that I was on the right track.

Four years passed, and my plans to return Wolf to the forest were nearly complete. Now was the time to gain public support for the project and further improve Wolf’s image. So I asked a local television station if they would like to cover the story. They sent out a reporter and film crew. Within minutes of their arrival I came up unawares behind the cameraman, who was crouched before Simbut, thrusting his video camera into her face. He was obviously prodding her in hope of getting some footage of her snarling. Here one of the very people I asked to help was planning to perpetuate the myth of the bloodthirsty killer!

I was in no mood to tolerate this display of the popular media’s tendency to "feed the frenzy"; I had to repress the urge to give him a boot and send him witlessly sprawling before the victim of his taunting. Instead, I did some consciousness-raising, and the news team turned out a fine story. The evening it aired I couldn’t help but notice the continual parade of cars on our normally quiet road, all slowing down where the wolf pen came closest to the road. In every vehicle faces were pressed up against the windows in effort to get a glimpse of a wolf. This continued for days, prompting the television station to do a follow-up.

I never suspected that this quiet project would be of such interest to so many! The response was overwhelmingly positive and supportive: press coverage expanded to magazines and newspapers, donations of labor and materials were offered for the proposed center, and I was asked to be on the governing board of a large environmental organization.

But there was a pea under the mattress. The center was to be located in a sparsely populated region of northern Wisconsin — where enmity toward the wolf was still prevalent. A sympathetic informant from the region told me that some of the locals who saw the television coverage reacted strongly, asserting that the wolves would likely be killed if they were moved up there. I interviewed local residents; the informant had not exaggerated. Enter Linda and Jeff Pagel, who offered to take over. They would make the project clandestine and unrelated to public education on behalf of the Wolf.

Over time, I came to visit Wolfie and Deshum Nashak and Simbut, but it was not the same. Like old friends, we were glad to see each other, but we were no longer packmates. The wolves had adapted to their new environment, and their pack structure had adjusted to new people and new wolves (Linda and Jeff had already been already caring for three).

But the solution we’d engineered was only a reprieve. Only two years passed before the pack of human hunters appeared in Jeff’s driveway. Jeff knew he met all the requirements for legal possession of wolves, but he had no money to assert his rights in court, and he had nowhere else to take the wolves. So he negotiated with the wardens to keep his pet female; the other six adults and three pups were separated from each other and sent to various zoos around the state.

Linda called me immediately after the truck rolled out of their driveway with the tranquilized wolves, and I cried. My family had been quite literally torn apart, with each member taken to an unknown concentration camp. Helpless to do anything, I sank into a deep depression. I developed a scheme to bust them out of their respective jails. And then I faced the truth: these children would never again people the forest as did their grandparents. I mourned their living death and the fact that I never would see them again. I couldn’t stand to see them alone, in tiny cages, like their parents. And I couldn’t risk awakening memories that would shake them out of their torpor and make their lives that much more miserable.

Two decades later I was guiding a group on a canoe trip down a wild northern river. One stone-still moonlit evening, high on the bank above the fog blanketed river, we sat around the fire, drumming and sharing stories. I gave voice to my journey with the Wolf, as I have given it to you, and I told of my continuing relationship with Wolf Spirit. I also expressed my inability to find peace around those turbulent times.

A dark-haired woman sat across the fire from me, playing a transfixing rhythm on her hoop drum. Warm ripples of reflective firelight danced and coalesced on the drumhead; I felt compelled to stare unblinkingly at the forming patterns. Ever-so-slowly the image of a wolf’s head emerged. The massively broad face and heavy muzzle completely covered the drum’s surface. It could only be Deshum Nashak!

The beat of the drum became his pulse as he came to life and looked upon me. Exploding joy and pangs of longing clouded my eyes! It had been so long — but only in my reality. He wanted to play his favorite game, the staredown, just as if we had seen each other yesterday. I hadn’t yet met a wolf I couldn’t stare down; wolves do not like to lose connection with their surroundings. But this time, Deshum Nashak held my focus as Drum’s voice brought my heartbeat into sync with Earth’s rhythm and tranced me, drew me, into the dancing ripples of his face, into the ethereal realm where he dwelled behind the Drum.

Grasses and early summer flowers reached thigh-high all across a softly undulating meadow. Deshun Neshak bounded toward me, jumping high to keep me in sight. I reveled in his form and majesty. His eager movements and open, puppylike face belied the fact that he weighed nearly as much as me. We wrestled, raced side-by-side through the heather, jumped streams, and gracefully brushed through the firs as we entered the deep forest. He led me to know that all was well with the pack and him, and that the Mother Earth of their realm was in Her primal splendor.

Drum’s heart returned mine to me as the rhythm quieted. I left the dreamdance meadow through the drumhoop from which I’d come and returned to the firecircle. Looking softly back at the drumhead, I saw no more than cavorting fireshadows. Like heavy snow on a bough, a wilting sadness stooped me to memories of our long past parting. I could now embrace those memories, for I had been gifted peace.

I walked alone into the quiet forest. Humbled beneath the cathedral pines, I honored my friend with what I had: a small gift of tears, which fell before me on the ancient trail, a trail that still remembers the long-ago feel of his parents’ tracks.

Twelve years have passed since that night on the river. In that time the wolf has returned to the northern forest. Biologists cannot account for the first of the returning wolves; they simply appeared in the middle of this vast wolf-less expanse. A few of us, though, know how it happened.

Tamarack Song is a Native-approach counselor, wilderness skills teacher and rites of passage guide. He can be reached at 715-546-2944 or tdrums2@newnorth.net. Or visit his Web page

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