Never Cry Wolf

by Farley Mowat

  The Ottawa ordeal drew toward its end; but the climax was still to come. One early spring morning I was called to the office of the senior officer who was my direct chief, for a final interview before departing “into the field.”

  My chief sat behind a massive desk whose dusty surface was littered with yellowing groundhog skulls (he had been studying rates of tooth decay in groundhogs ever since he joined the Department in 1897). At his back hung the frowning, bearded portrait of an extinct mammalogist who glared balefully down upon me. The smell of Formalin swirled about like the fetid breath of an undertaker’s back parlor.

  After a long silence, during which he toyed portentously with some of his skulls, my chief began his briefing. There was a solemnity about the occasion which would have done justice to the briefing of a special agent about to be entrusted with the assassination of a Head of State.

  “As you are aware, Lieutenant Mowat,” my chief began, “the Canis lupus problem has become one of national importance. Within this past year alone this Department has received no less than thirty-seven memoranda from Members of the House of Commons, all expressing the deep concern of their constituents that we ought to do something about the wolf. Most of the complaints have come from such civic-minded and disinterested groups as various Fish and Game clubs, while members of the business community—in particular the manufacturers of some well-known brands of ammunition—have lent their weight to the support of these legitimate grievances of the voting public of this Great Dominion, because their grievance is the complaint that the wolves are killing all the deer, and more and more of our fellow citizens are coming back from more and more hunts with less and less deer.

  “As you may possibly have heard, my predecessor supplied the Minister with an explanation of this situation in which it was his contention that there were fewer deer because the hunters had increased to the point where they outnumbered the deer about five to one. The Minister, in all good faith, read this fallacious statement in the House of Commons, and he was promptly shouted down by Members howling ‘Liar!’ and ‘Wolf-lover!’

  “Three days later my predecessor retired to civilian life, and the Minister issued a press statement: ‘The Department of Mines and Resources is determined to do everything in its power to curb the carnage being wreaked upon the deer population by hordes of wolves. A full-scale investigation of this vital problem, employing the full resources of the Department, is to be launched at once. The people of this country can rest assured that the Government of which I have the honor to be a member will leave no stone unturned to put an end to this intolerable situation.’”

  At this juncture my chief seized a particularly robust groundhog skull and began rhythmically clacking its jaws together as if to emphasize his final words:

  “You, Lieutenant Mowat, have been chosen for this great task! It only remains for you to go out into the field at once and tackle this work in a manner worthy of the great traditions of this Department. The wolf, Lieutenant Mowat, is now your problem!”

  Somehow I staggered to my feet, and with an involuntary motion brought my right hand up in a smart salute before fleeing from the room.

  I fled from Ottawa too…that self-same night, aboard a Canadian Air Force transport plane. My immediate destination was Churchill, on the western shore of Hudson Bay; but beyond that, somewhere in the desolate wastes of the subarctic Barren Lands, lay my ultimate objective—the wolf himself.

  2

  Wolf Juice

  THE AIR FORCE transport was a twin-engined plane capable of carrying thirty passengers, but by the time all my “desiderata” were aboard there was barely room left for the crew and me. The pilot, an amiable flight lieutenant wearing a handlebar mustache, watched the load going aboard with honest bewilderment writ large across his brow. His only information about me was that I was some sort of Government man going on a special mission to the Arctic. His expression grew increasingly quizzical as we swung three great bundles of clanking wolf traps into the cabin, following these with the midsection of a collapsible canoe which looked like nothing so much as a bathtub without ends. True to Departmental precedent, the bow and stern sections of this canoe had been shipped to another biologist who was studying rattlesnakes in the south Saskatchewan desert.

  My armament was loaded aboard next. It consisted of two rifles, a revolver complete with holster and cartridge belt, two shotguns, and a case of tear-gas grenades with which I was expected to persuade reluctant wolves to leave their dens so that they could be shot. There were also two large smoke generators prominently labeled DANGER, to be used for signaling to aircraft in case I got lost or—perhaps—in case the wolves closed in. A case of “wolf getters”—fiendish devices which fire a charge of potassium cyanide into the mouth of any animal which investigates them—completed my arsenal.

  My scientific gear followed, including two five-gallon cans at the sight of which the pilot’s eyebrows shot right up under his cap. They were marked: 100% Grain Alcohol for the Preservation of Specimen Stomachs.

  Tents, camp stoves, sleeping bags, and a bundle of seven axes (to this day I do not know why seven, for I was going to a treeless land where even one would have been superfluous), skis, snowshoes, dog harness, a radio transceiver and innumerable boxes and bales whose contents were as inscrutable to me as to the pilot, followed in due course.

  When everything was in and securely roped down, the pilot, copilot and I crawled over the mass of gear and wedged ourselves into the cockpit. The pilot, having been thoroughly trained in the demands of military security, mastered his rampant curiosity as to the nature and purpose of my bizarre outfit and contented himself with the gloomy comment that he “doubted if the old crate could get airborne, with all that lot aboard.” Secretly I doubted it too, but although the plane rattled and groaned dismally, she managed to take off.

  The flight north was long and uneventful, except that we lost one engine over James Bay and had to complete the journey at an altitude of five hundred feet through rather dense fog. This minor contretemps temporarily took the pilot’s mind off the problem of who and what I was; but once we had landed in Churchill he was unable to contain his curiosity any longer.

  “I know it’s none of my damn’ business,” he began apologetically as we walked toward one of the hangars, “but for heaven’s sake, chum, what’s up?”

  “Oh,” I replied cheerfully, “I’m going off to spend a year or two living with a bunch of wolves, that’s all.”

  The pilot grimaced as if he were a small boy who had been justly rebuked for an impertinence.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled contritely. “Never should have asked.”

  That pilot was not the only one who was curious. When I began trying to make arrangements in Churchill for a commercial bush-plane to fly me on into the interior, my innocent explanation of my purpose, together with the honest admission that I hadn’t the slightest idea where, in the almost untraveled wilderness, I wanted to be set down, drew either hostile stares of disbelief or conspiratorial winks. However, I was not deliberately trying to be evasive; I was only trying to follow the operation order which had been laid down for me in Ottawa:

  Para. 3

  Sec. (C)

  Subpara. (iii)

  You will, immediately upon reaching Churchill, proceed by chartered air transport in a suitable direction for the requisite distance and thereupon establish a Base at a point where it has been ascertained there is an adequate wolf population and where conditions generally are optimal to the furtherance of your operations….

  Although these instructions were firm in tone, they were rather lacking in specific direction, and I suppose it was only natural that half the population of Churchill should have concluded I was a member of a high-grade gang of gold-ore thieves attempting to make contact with my fellow conspirators; while the other half thought I was a prospector with knowledge of a secret mine somewhere in the vast interior Barrens. Later on, both these theories were discarded in favor of a vastly more in
triguing one. When I eventually re-established contact with Churchill after many months of absence, it was to discover that the nature of my “real” mission had become public property: I had, so I then learned, actually spent the intervening months floating around the North Pole on an ice floe, keeping tabs on the activities of a crowd of Russians who were drifting about on their ice floe. My two cans of grain alcohol were believed to have been vodka, with which to loosen the tongues of the parched Russians in order to pry out their innermost secrets.

  I became something of a hero after that story gained acceptance; but as I walked the bleak and snow-filled streets of Churchill shortly after my arrival there, trying to find a bush pilot to fly me to an unknown destination, I had not yet achieved hero status, and most of the people I spoke to were unhelpful.

  After some delay I located the pilot of an ancient Fairchild ski-plane who made his precarious living flying Barren Land trappers to their remote cabins. When I put my problem to him he was roused to exasperation.

  “Listen, Mac!” he cried. “Only nuts hire planes to go somewhere they don’t know where; and only nuts’d expect a guy to swallow a yarn about goin’ off to keep house with a bunch of wolves. You go find yourself another plane jockey, see? I’m too busy to play games.”

  As it happened there were no other plane jockeys in the dismal shacktown of Churchill at that time, although, shortly before my arrival, there had been three. One of them had made a miscalculation while attempting to land on the pack ice of Hudson Bay in order to shoot a polar bear—and the bear had been the sole survivor of the attempt. The second was away in Winnipeg trying to float a loan with which to purchase a new plane after the wing of his previous aircraft had come unstuck during a takeoff. The third was, of course, the one who was too busy to play games.

  Since I could not adhere strictly to my original orders, I did what I thought was the next best thing, and radioed Ottawa for new instructions. The reply came back promptly, six days later:

  UNABLE UNDERSTAND YOUR DIFFICULTIES STOP YOUR INSTRUCTIONS ARE PERFECTLY CLEAR STOP IF CAREFULLY FOLLOWED NO DIFFICULTIES SHOULD DEVELOP STOP WHEN SENDING COMMERCIAL RADIO MESSAGES TO THIS DEPARTMENT YOU ARE INSTRUCTED TO RESTRICT YOURSELF TO MATTERS OF UTMOST IMPORTANCE AND UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES REPEAT UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD THESE MESSAGES BE LONGER THAN TEN WORDS STOP EXPECT INTERIM PROGRESS REPORT WITHIN TWO WEEKS BY WHICH TIME IT IS ANTICIPATED YOU SHOULD HAVE ESTABLISHED CLOSE CONTACT WITH CANIS LUPUS STOP RADIO MESSAGES AT DEPARTMENTAL EXPENSE SHOULD BE RESTRICTED TO TEN WORDS AND IMPORTANT MATTERS ONLY AND KEPT AS BRIEF AS POSSIBLE STOP WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVE ONLY HALF A CANOE STOP THE COST OF YOUR RADIOGRAM IS BEING DEBITED AGAINST YOUR SALARY

  CHIEF PREDATION CONTROL DIVISION

  There was clearly nothing for it but to await the problematical return of the pilot who had gone to Winnipeg. Meanwhile I stayed at the local hotel, a creaking barn through whose gaping walls a fine drift of snow used to whirl and settle on a windy day. There was no other kind of day in Churchill.

  Nevertheless I was not idle. Churchill was then full of missionaries, prostitutes, mounted policemen, rum-runners, trappers, fur smugglers, ordinary fur traders and other interesting characters, all of whom, so it developed, were authorities on wolves. One by one I sought them out and studiously copied down what they had to tell me. From these sources I received some fascinating information, most of which had never previously been recorded in the scientific literature. I discovered that, although wolves reputedly devour several hundred people in the Arctic Zone every year, they will always refrain from attacking a pregnant Eskimo. (The missionary who provided me with this remarkable data was convinced that the wolfish antipathy toward pregnant flesh encouraged a high birthrate among the Eskimos and a consequent lamentable concern with reproductive rather than spiritual matters.) I was told that every four years wolves are subject to a peculiar disease which causes them to shed their entire skins—and during the period when they are running about naked they are so modest they will curl up in a ball if closely approached. The trappers whom I interviewed informed me that wolves were rapidly destroying the caribou herds; that each wolf killed thousands of caribou a year just out of blood-lust, while no trapper would think of shooting a caribou except under the most severe provocation. One of the working ladies of the settlement added the odd bit of information that since the establishment there of an American Air Base the wolf population had increased out of all bounds, and the only thing to do when bitten by one was to bite him right back.

  Quite early in my inquiry I was asked by an old trapper if, since I was a wolf enthusiast, I would like some wolf-juice. I said I did not think I would relish the drink, but since I was a scientist and anything to do with wolves was grist to my mill, I was willing to have a go. The old man thereupon led me off to Churchill’s only beer parlor (a place I would normally have avoided) and introduced me to wolf-juice: a mixture which consisted of something called Moose Brand Beer liberally adulterated with antifreeze alcohol obtained from the soldiers at the Air Base.

  Shortly after my baptism of wolf-juice I submitted my first progress report. It was in longhand and (perhaps fortunately for my continuing employment with the Department) proved completely indecipherable. No one in Ottawa could read a word of it; from which fact it was assumed that the report must be tremendously erudite. This report is, I believe, still on file with the Department, and is still consulted by Government specialists requiring expert data about wolves. As recently as last month I met a biologist who had seen it and who assured me that it was considered by many authorities to be the final word on Canis lupus.

  Not only did I unearth many fascinating facts about wolves during my enforced stay in Churchill but I also made an independent discovery, possibly of even greater importance. I discovered that when the laboratory alcohol with which I had been supplied, was mixed sparingly with Moose Brand Beer a variety of wolf-juice resulted which was positively ambrosial. Thoughtfully I added fifteen cases of Moose Brand to my “desiderata.” I also purchased several gallons of formaldehyde—which, as any undertaker will confirm, is at least as good a preservative of dead animal tissue as is grain alcohol.

  3

  Happy Landings

  MY ENFORCED STAY in Churchill came to an end during the last week in May. For three days there had been a howling blizzard; then, during the third day, with visibility reduced to zero by blinding snow squalls, an aircraft came over the hotel at nought feet and with an expiring stutter flopped down on the ice of a nearby pond. The wind nearly blew it away again and would have done so had not several of us rushed out of the beer parlor and caught hold of its wings.

  This plane was an outrageously decrepit bi-motor built in 1938 as a military training aircraft. It had been discarded after long years of service, only to be resuscitated by a lanky, hollow-eyed ex-R. A. F. pilot who had delusions about starting his own airline in the Canadian North. He descended from the creaky machine as we struggled to keep it on the ground and, having untwined a yard-long cerise silk scarf from around his face, introduced himself. He had come, he said, from Yellowknife, some seven hundred miles to the northwest, and his destination was The Pas….. “was this The Pas?” Gently we informed him that The Pas lay some four hundred miles to the southwest. This news did not seem to dismay him. “Ah, well, any old port in a storm,” he said gaily, and having been joined by his sluggish mechanic he accompanied us back to the beer parlor.

  Here, somewhat later in the day, I found myself confessing my difficulty to him.

  “No problem,” he said after he had heard me out in attentive silence. “Gas up the old kite tomorrow and take you anywhere. Fly northwest—best course for us. Can’t trust compass on any other course. Fly nice and low. Find lots of wolves; then put you down, and Happy Landings!”

  He was almost as good as his word, although the next three days proved inauspicious for the flight—first because of a cloud cover at ground level, and secondly because the ski-equipped plane had developed a seve
re limp as a result of the collapse of one of the hydraulic cylinders of the landing gear. There was nothing we could do about the weather, but the plane’s engineer discovered it was possible to restore the hydraulic cylinder to duty by filling it with seal-oil. It still leaked, but the plane would remain upright for as long as twenty minutes at a time before keeling over on its side again like a dying duck.

  On the morning of the fourth day we prepared to depart. Because the plane could carry only a small load, I was forced to jettison some of my “desiderata,” including the useless canoe-cum-bathtub. I was able, however, to trade a gallon of alcohol for a seventeen-foot canvas-covered canoe in fair condition, and this—so the pilot assured me—we could carry with us lashed under the belly of the aircraft.

  At this point I played a somewhat underhanded trick on this obliging fellow. My Moose Brand had been amongst the gear set aside as nonessential; but one evening, by flashlight, I discovered that the whole fifteen cases would fit nicely into the canoe which, when tied tightly up against the plane’s belly, betrayed nothing of the vital cargo which it carried.

  It was a beautiful day when we departed. The wind had sunk to about forty miles an hour from the east, and there was no snow falling as we took off through a black sea fog, promptly lost sight of Churchill, and circled into the northwest.

  Actually it was not quite that easy. A brief thaw the previous day had allowed the plane’s skis to sink into an inch or two of slush, where they had frozen solid to the underlying ice. Our first attempt at a takeoff was anticlimatic, for even with both engines bellowing in an agonized manner the plane refused to budge. This recalcitrant behavior seemed to mystify pilot and engineer alike, and it was not until some of the gentlemen from the beer parlor ran out, and stood shouting soundlessly against the roar and pointing at our skis, that we began to comprehend the nature of our dilemma. Helped by these willing fellows we eventually managed to rock the plane loose, but not before the weak cylinder had collapsed again, thereby occasioning a further delay while another shot of seal-oil was administered.