"Wolves are so full
of passion that they can barely stand it. That summer, a wolf pack
up in Alsaska hunted down
four grizzlies--a
mother and three yearling cubs--because the grizzlies had wandered too
close to the wolves' den.
Normally grizzlies
dominate wolves. But not this time.
The wolf pack in
Denali (twelve hunting members) was pissed
because the grizzlies
had crossed that boundary of motherhood, had come far too close to the
den, and the very
next day, the wolves
sanctioned
the grizzlies: went out hunting, caught up with the bears and killed two
of the young
grizzlies and wounded
the other young bear and the big sow. There weren't any second chances,
no bluffing the way
two species capable
of hurting each other usually do; nor was there the discipline, or desire,
on the wolves' part,
to serve their revenge
"cold" as the Sicilian adage goes. There was too much passion.
The wolves were last
seen carrying grizzley-bear
body parts back to their den for the pups to feed on.
...I think that evolutionary
stuff is fine up to a point, but that there is also a point where it becomes
bullshit--that
twelve wolves attacking
and fighting to the death four grizzlies is pure passion, revenge
and nothing else."
-Rick Bass, from
The
Ninemile Wolves
I saw this wolf in
early August in Central Idaho. It was raining hard and we were puzzled
as to why the wolf
didn't flee. We then looked on the other side of the road and saw
the carcass it
was feeding from.
Graffitii not far
from this wolf was scrawled on an abandoned building: "Went hunting elk.
Came back empty.
The wolves got all
of them." In this neck of the woods, such a tame wolf might
not last long. This wolf seemed
very habituated
to having humans in vehicles so close. Or perhaps it just hadn't had any
negative experiences yet.
Not much of Bass'
passion exhibited in this wolf. It was likely a "disperser" wolf.
To generate that
passion it perhaps
needed something to get worked up about: a pack, a den full of puppies,
a territory.
Rick Bass, in The
Ninemile Wolves, tells in the early nineties of Montana wolves just
starting to roam outside of
Glacier park, and
there were yet to be any wolves in Yellowstone at that time. I saw
this wolf about 50 miles from Boise.
There are now a
handful of full wolf packs in Yellowstone. A wolf was recently killed
trying to cross I-70 in central Colorado.
A wolf can easily
cover 20, 30, 40 miles in a single night. So, these images are coming
to a woods near you.
Wolf prey.
A moose? Elk? I didn't disturb the wolf by approaching it.