A girl and her wolf

     There is a North American Indian belief that some people make a pact with nature at a young age. These are the people who tend the earth, they inherently know if you take care of the earth it will take care of you, these people understand the balance of nature,they are the people you find working with animals,outdoorsy types, or those with seemingly a deeper connection to the natural earth and its inhabitants. 

     There is peace in the noise of nature,like the rustle of leaves in the wind or the crunch and shuffle of them underfoot.  There is comfort in the conversation of birds.  The surf lapping the sands or waves crashing the shoreline is a contrast of calm within chaos.  Even the startling crunch of snow and ice underfoot or the eerie caw of a crow evokes a gentle serenity in the human soul.  This is why we attempt to go where no man has gone before.  This is why we pitch tents or chase sun rises on hopefully deserted beaches.  We need to escape the madness of our own creation,  There is a deep primal need to connect with nature in each of us, some feel it stronger than others, some choose to ignore it,some seek it and revel in it. 

     When I was too young to venture out on my own I would sit at windows watching the effects of wind and rain,I fell asleep to the songs of barn owls and wind calling through pine trees.  The backyard eventually became my world, I was small and this world seemed vast.  I have since returned to this backyard and cannot wrap my mind around the fact that the trees are not all that tall the hill is not actually steep and the house is a  short walk from the barn at the edge of the field. When I was a child  the pine trees stretched to the sky and would make gigantic sweeping shelters when their branches were laden with snow.  The mountainous hill required several rests to the top, where I would kneel in the snow looking up through falling snowflakes to the dizzying,swaying tree tops, waiting for one to break under its snowy weight.  I would traverse the length of the yard, past the barn looking for animal tracks in the snow or mud simply so I could follow them and find the creature in hopes of playing with them.  I grew up with animals, dogs,cats, horses,chickens,roosters,fish,Guinea pigs,hamsters,gerbils parakeets,skunks,raccoons,squirrels,parakeets and rabbits.

     The backyard soon became the neighborhood which was the center of a small town extending in all four directions.  I would ride my bike or walk as far as I dared.  There were fields to go through,railroad tracks to follow, cemeteries that extended back a few hundred years to explore,patches of woods to hide in or explore, to watch,listen and learn in or to just "be".  Though I played with other children often I was also extraordinarily content to go off on my own, so I did and still do though my backyard has now extended to the entire world or at the very least parts of North America, I have much to explore.  To this day I am drawn to watching dragonflies, delighted with sunsets and sunrises, bodies of water, sand in my toes,grass underfoot, rocky terrain,the smell of rain and snow, the colors of nature,astonished by leaping whales and in awe of whitetails navigating a forest run,amazed at nature and animals, how perfectly it all works.  By the age of ten I knew I would work with animals as an adult, the plan was to be a large animal vet, I wanted to be the one helping relocate rhinoceroses or saving injured lions and eagles. As life takes its course I found this plan fading and not followed as diligently as I should have.  I found myself doing other things,feeling unfulfilled. 

   It takes time to come full circle but some of us are fortunate enough to be hit on the head while navigating the circle.  Our eyes are opened and our course is re charted.  This occurred for me after moving to Oklahoma City.
     The city is a sprawling metropolis offering up a share of homelessness,inner city gangs,motorcycle gangs, illegal drug activity,prostitution poverty, seedy strip clubs and diners you can still smoke in, alongside billionaire ranches,colleges high-end shops, five star dining, Broadway shows,  art districts, several concert venues, rock climbing facilities, airports, military bases, fairgrounds,flea markets and more pawn shops and auto dealerships than one would think possible.  It has several school districts, middle,upper and lower class neighborhoods with parks seemingly unintentionally segregated with all nationalities, Mexican,black, native American and white being the four predominant.  There are churches scattered throughout along with many people and animal shelters packed to capacity. There are wal-marts and restaurant chains, malls, museums and one fabulous zoo.This zoo has animal enclosures mimicking natural habitats,not cages.  I am a frequent visitor. Thus the place I got my proverbial bump on the head whilst navigating my life circle. There was a job opening available with the apes, I was fortunate enough to fall into.  I was able to observe and record behavior as well as interact with the apes. The job was not a long term position so I did my stint and marveled at my good fortune and then I was fed back to the lions,  I  mean the humans.  I am not a city girl.  I don't mind a visit but in truth the city makes me uncomfortable, it is confining, unnatural and unnerving.  I looked for escape.  What I found were stray animals everywhere. Dogs and cats alike.  More often than not I found myself pulling my car over coaxing a stray dog to me and bringing it home. Thus began my volunteering at the animal shelter. I was fostering dogs in my home until they could find homes of their own. I found myself helping one dog give birth and then raising her six pups as she lacked the instinct to mother almost entirely. I cleaned the pups and helped them take their first breath, I fed them via a dropper round the clock and resented the bitch for rejecting her pups. But, that is nature sometimes. I have no interest in breeders,pet stores or puppy mills or puppies for the sake of puppies.  Your pets need to be spayed or neutered.  You do not need to have puppies for extra income or to keep the line of breed going.  You do need to visit a shelter.  Spend five minutes in one at least.  You will understand the need for spaying and neutering and our responsibility to these animals. There are many low cost spay and neuter programs available in every state, contact your local shelter or SPCA for information.
     Still naturally needing an escape and finding nowhere in the city that wasn't inhabited with a plethora of people regularly. I drove outside the city.   There are woods once one gets past the housing developments and neighborhoods.  There are lakes.  There are places I've discovered where I can breathe.  One such escape brought me to saving the life of and sharing a life with a misunderstood creature. A wolf.

   It was the end of February, still cold in the mid west. There hadn't been much snow or ice just a prevailing cold.  I needed to get out as I was still raising the six pups, I felt a serious bout of cabin fever and went to the woods seeking quiet and serenity.  I had  walked about a mile in, I was quiet in my walking, I was listening to the quiet of the wood which in some cases is deafening at other times it is rife with a cacophony of natures music. Being day light in February it was a still kind of  quiet I was experiencing. I was walking east into the sun,squinting and happy I noticed a mound of snow,dirt and wood debris in front of a large oak tree I was passing.  In fact, I did pass it , thinking  I sensed some movement and  being a very curious girl I did the only thing natural to me and that was go back to investigate. As I got closer I saw paws and slight movement. I began making noise and approaching more cautiously but soon realized the animal was dead and the animal was a wolf.  I am unsure of the wolf population in Oklahoma and honestly wasn't sure there was one as the wolf population throughout North America has been drastically decreased and only in recent years been allowed to grow in some parts via the wolf reintroduction program at Yellowstone National Park.  My first thought was that it was a dog.  Once I began to dig around and dig the animal out of her attempted burrow I saw she was all wolf and had died giving birth.  I suspected she was sick or injured to begin with and hadn't been able to make a proper lair in the weeks before her birthing, which is what wolves do. This is also why I wasn't leery of other pack members coming out of the woods.  I suspected she was either a lone wolf due to something happening to her mate. Wolves mate for life. She may have been  ousted from the pack due to sickness or injury. I wish I knew her story.  She had birthed three pups  and they had begun nursing but two of them had frozen to death at some point. There was one pup in between its two froze litter mates feebly squirming and attempting to extract nourishment from its mother, clearly only surviving due to the sparse warmth or its litter mates which was becoming non existent. My heart leaped at this point and my only thought was saving this wolf pups life.  I honestly don't think the pups were 24 hours old or even a full 12 hours.  I took off my jacket, wrapped the pup in it, told mama wolf I would look after her baby and left the woods.  Knowing full well this pup needed immediate nourishment as well as warmth and that timing was crucial I went directly to the nearest store which thankfully was a Wal-Mart,they have almost everything. I brought the pup inside with me in my jacket and I was able to purchase baby formula and a dropper.   I had a can opener on my key chain to open the can of formula.  I sat down right there in Wal-Mart and began to feed the pup, he took to the formula right away, greedily. No one seemed to pay much attention to me feeding a wolf pup in Wal-Marts infant department oddly enough;in fact, I barely warranted a glance from an employee. The wolf was only two pounds at the most and not much bigger than my hand. He became known to me as Little Wolf. I took him home. My thought was to raise him as much like a mother wolf as was possible and then release him back to the woods when he seemed old enough.  My biggest problem was I was not a mother wolf. Soon his eyes opened to the world around him and as he grew i realized I wasn't prepared to chew raw meat and regurgitate it while he licked it out of my mouth nor did I know the proper way to teach him about his pack or how to play and hunt for survival, all things a mother wolf would know. His play mates fast became his pack and was comprised of the six pups I was raising as well as a few foster dogs and a stray staying with me. I vaccinated him with canine vaccines, fed him puppy food, let him play and sort out his place in the pack with the other pups but decided it may be wise for me to maintain dominance over him. He had fast become the dominant pack member,known as the Alpha with all the other dogs in the home and no one seemed up to challenging him except for me. The alpha wolf in a pack is the decision maker for the pack, the other members look to him for everything, Little Wolf took his role as Alpha seriously and became a big help to me in raising the pups and keeping everyone in line as well as an assistant to me in training. Though he was younger he seemed more intelligent than the pups. Little Wolf did not like to sleep inside with the other dogs but loved stretching out on the back steps by the back door especially on cooler evenings. He also took to stealing things and hiding them. He became known as Bandit as well as Little Wolf. I never could establish a reason for Bandits thievery other than it was a game to him. He would steal dishes,pots and pans from the lower cabinets, socks, shoes, remotes and car keys. I soon learned his hiding places were various spots in the back yard and also learned to hide things from him as well as always check the back yard first if something came up missing. By the time he was six months old and forty pounds I turned to Shaun Ellis for help.  Bandit wasn't a domesticated dog, he had other instincts and other ideas about the way life was going to be. I wanted to know more about wolves and the things Bandit was trying to tell me. It seemed I was always misunderstanding him. The pups were easy, I knew when they needed to go out and what time to feed them and how to get them to sit and stay.  The same held true for Bandit but he was always challenging me and was also restless.  I found out about Shaun on a chance visit to the library for information on wolves.  There was a National Geographic video documentary of him on the shelf referring to him as the wolf man.

Though I was never able to contact him personally he enlightened me to so much regarding Bandits signals via his publications and videos. Shaun has worked with,studied and literally lived in a wolf pack as a wolf. This is an amazing story in and of itself. His book is called The Man Who Lives with Wolves.  He also did a show for Animal Planet called Living with the Wolf man.  Through Shauns information I learned why Bandit would howl and began to differentiate what his different howls meant.  Wolves communicate in so many ways, much as humans do.  Howling is a way to let other packs know they are there or a different pack might be infringing on their territory. They howl to locate,they howl to alert,they howl to announce, they howl for loss every howl has a different meaning and there are many different howls.  I learned much about the wolves diet but being how Bandit was not living in the woods and I was not going to take him hunting every other day he would subsist on dog food and the meats I occasionally allowed him.  Wolves have amazing knowledge of themselves and their world.  Wolves instinctively know what to eat. If a wolf has worms it will find rotting meat to eat in order to chase the worms out of its system.  In colder weather a wolf will eat the stomach lining of a deer or elk for the  nutrients and fat it provides for extra warmth. Even certain parts of a kill are allotted for certain pack members. Wolves will not kill or take more than they need. Wolves do not kill for sport or fun.  Bandit is a hunter. He has killed rats,mice,frogs,gophers,squirrel and snakes, occasionally he brings me a carcass. I know he is sharing his treat with me and I try to appear gracious every time although it isn't my idea of a box of chocolates.  Bandit is also gentle and shy.  Wolves are actually very shy creatures. They are not aggressive without reason and the few isolated incidents where a human has been attacked the wolf has been sick and in the case of the jogger, he had been subsisting on a diet of fish for months and simply smelled like prey in a very unusual and isolated hunger situation.
I have witnessed Bandit tackle grown men upon entering my home but, merely gently sniff a child.
I've witnessed him gouge and nearly take the ear off an unlucky stray that wandered into his yard but take a new pup gently in his teeth,out of my hands to gently groom and cuddle it. 
I've seen him make friends with every dog in the dog park but on occasion one will becoming challenging to one of his pack and he will quickly put an end to the challenge with a certain approach to the other dog.
I've seen him take down another dog for what he perceived as a threat to me but without harming the animal.
I've seem him break up fights within the pack by simply stepping on one of the dogs,flipping the dog on its back and standing over it.
But,I've also seen him run away from a cat and a goose.  So much for the big bad wolf.

Bandit has never been aggressive with me, he has never growled at me in so much as a warning, he has never tried to knock or pull me down in play or at all, he has never bit me though he has had his mouth and teeth on me gently in play or to convey something to me such as pulling me to the door or to wake me or get my attention.
When I take him out to run and roam he is spectacular in his strength and beauty. He is more curious than any animal I have encountered. He is constantly sniffing and smelling everything he encounters. He loves to swim and chase ducks and geese. He loves to dig, he loves to run. He will not go more than twenty or so feet ahead of me before he will slow and look back to be sure I am still following though the older he gets the less he looks as he most likely just senses me via smell or sound.  He is all wolf when we are out on our roaming. There are many times when we get back in the car and I look back in my rear view mirror to see him sitting upright,leaning against the back seat staring out the rear view window as his freedom ebbs out of sight and my heart goes out to him. I would love to see him be accepted into a pack in the wild and know that life.  Bandit is now two years old,( wolves have been known to live in captivity up to 17 years) he has known nothing of the wild,he has been a member of a domesticated dog pack and a loyal friend to me. He is 125 pounds of wonderful companionship and inspiration to me. Bandit was a gift and through him I have learned patience, he has helped me cultivate a new sense of humor and how to greater observe life and be present in my own life as well as appreciate  moments in nature even more, he has taught me a new awareness and how to listen. He has insisted on a six thirty wake up daily for well over a year,therefore I rarely miss a sunrise. I'm sure this is part of his plan for me,no missed sunrises. Its not really a bad idea. Bandit has helped show me my way back to my desire and calling to work with animals. I now am studying to be an animal behaviourist and trainer.  I leave you with one more story about nature and self discovery from the Nez Perce' "A man was on a voyage of self-discovery,hoping he might find some answers from the wise Indians to help lift his depression.  He was an earnest young man and wore the weight of the world on his shoulders. One of the tribal elders told him he must go off in the forest for three days to find scats, droppings from deer,bears,mountain lions,coyotes,foxes, and wolves. He returned with a great collection that the elder then said he must mix with water and make into a paste.  That took him another two days. It was now day five and in the heat of summer;the smell and the flies were appalling. Next,said the elder,he must inscribe a circle around himself with a stick in the sand and pour the pasted he had made into the groove made by the stick.  Finally,the elder told him to sit inside the circle for as long as it took for the coyote to come and tell him what to do next.  It was several hours before it dawned on the white man just what he'd done. He'd spent three days gathering other people's crap and was sitting right in the middle of it.

   That's irony, he ended up roaring with laughter and was released from the worries of the world.  I simply recommend taking a walk outside every now and then.