by Farley Mowat
Because of their continent habits, my study of the wolves had so far revealed nothing about their sexual life and, unless I was prepared to follow them about during the brief mating season in March, when they would be wandering with the caribou herds, I stood no chance of filling in this vital gap in my knowledge.
Now I knew, from what Mike and Ootek had already told me, that wolves are not against miscegenation. In fact they will mate with dogs, or vice versa, whenever the opportunity arises. It does not arise often, because the dogs are almost invariably tied up except when working, but it does happen.
I put my proposition to Mike and to my delight he agreed. In fact he seemed quite pleased, for it appeared that he had long wished to discover for himself what kind of sled dogs a wolf-husky cross would make.
The next problem was how to arrange the experiment so that my researches would benefit to the maximum degree. I decided to do the thing in stages. The first stage was to consist of taking the bitch, whose name was Kooa, for a walk around the vicinity of my new observation site, in order to make her existence and condition known to the wolves.
Kooa was more than willing. In fact, when we crossed one of the wolf trails she became so enthusiastic it was all I could do to restrain her impetuosity by means of a heavy chain leash. Dragging me behind her she plunged down the trail, sniffing every marker with uninhibited anticipation.
It was with great difficulty that I dragged her back to the cabin where, once she was firmly tethered, she reacted by howling her frustration the whole night through.
Or perhaps it was not frustration that made her sing; for when I got up next morning Ootek informed me we had had a visitor. Sure enough, the tracks of a big wolf were plainly visible in the wet sand of the riverbank not a hundred yards from the dog-lines. Probably it was only the presence of the jealous male Huskies which had prevented the romance from being consummated that very night.
I had been unprepared for such quick results, although I should have foreseen that either George or Albert would have been sure to find some of Kooa’s seductively scented billets-doux that same evening.
I now had to rush the second phase of my plan into execution. Ootek and I repaired to the observation tent and, a hundred yards beyond it in the direction of the summer den, we strung a length of heavy wire between two rocks about fifty feet from one another.
The next morning we led Kooa (or more properly, were led by Kooa) to the site. Despite her determined attempts to go off wolf seeking on her own, we managed to shackle her chain to the wire. She retained considerable freedom of movement with this arrangement, and we could command her position from the tent with rifle fire in case anything went wrong.
Rather to my surprise she settled down at once and spent most of the afternoon sleeping. No adult wolves were in evidence near the summer den, but we caught glimpses of the pups occasionally as they lumbered about the little grassy patch, leaping and pouncing after mice.
About 8:30 P.M. the wolves suddenly broke into their pre-hunting song, although they themselves remained invisible behind a rock ridge to the south of the den.
The first sounds had barely reached me when Kooa leaped to her feet and joined the chorus. And how she howled! Although there is not, as far as I am aware, any canine or lupine blood in my veins, the seductive quality of Kooa’s siren song was enough to set me thinking longingly of other days and other joys.
That the wolves understood the burden of her plaint was not long in doubt. Their song stopped in mid-swing, and seconds later all three of them came surging over the crest of the ridge into our view. Although she was a quarter of a mile away, Kooa was clearly visible to them. After only a moment’s hesitation, both George and Uncle Albert started toward her at a gallop.
George did not get very far. Before he had gone fifty yards Angeline had overtaken him and, while I am not prepared to swear to this, I had the distinct impression that she somehow tripped him. At any rate he went sprawling in the muskeg, and when he picked himself up his interest in Kooa seemed to have evaporated. To do him justice, I do not believe he was interested in her in a sexual way—probably he was simply taking the lead in investigating a strange intruder into his domain. In any event, he and Angeline withdrew to the summer den, where they lay down together on the lip of the ravine and watched proceedings, leaving it up to Uncle Albert to handle the situation as he saw fit.
I do not know how long Albert had been celibate, but it had clearly been too long. When he reached the area where Kooa was tethered he was moving so fast he overshot. For one tense moment I thought he had decided we were competing suitors and was going to continue straight on into the tent to deal with us; but he got turned somehow, and his wild rush slowed. Then when he was within ten feet of Kooa, who was awaiting his arrival in a state of ecstatic anticipation, Albert’s manner suddenly changed. He stopped dead in his tracks, lowered his great head, and turned into a buffoon.
It was an embarrassing spectacle. Laying his ears back until they were flush with his broad skull, he began to wiggle like a pup while at the same time wrinkling his lips in a frightful grimace which may have been intended to register infatuation, but which looked to me more like a symptom of senile decay. He also began to whine in a wheedling falsetto which would have sounded disgusting coming from a Pekinese.
Kooa seemed nonplussed by his remarkable behavior. Obviously she had never before been wooed in this surprising manner, and she seemed uncertain what to do about it. With a half-snarl she backed away from Albert as far as her chain would permit.
This sent Albert into a frenzy of abasement. Belly to earth, he began to grovel toward her while his grimace widened into an expression of sheer idiocy.
I now began to share Kooa’s concern, and thinking the wolf had taken complete leave of his senses I was about to seize the rifle and go to Kooa’s rescue, when Ootek restrained me. He was grinning; a frankly salacious grin, and he was able to make it clear that I was not to worry; that things were progressing perfectly normally from a wolfish point of view.
At this point Albert shifted gears with bewildering rapidity. Scrambling to his feet he suddenly became the lordly male. His ruff expanded until it made a huge silvery aura framing his face. His body stiffened until he seemed to be made of white steel. His tail rose until it was as high, and almost as tightly curled, as a true Husky’s. Then, pace by delicate pace, he closed the gap.
Kooa was no longer in doubt. This was something she could understand. Rather coyly she turned her back toward him and as he stretched out his great nose to offer his first caress she spun about and nipped him coyly on the shoulder….
My notes on the rest of this incident are fully detailed but I fear they are too technical and full of scientific terminology to deserve a place in this book. I shall therefore content myself by summing up what followed with the observation that Albert certainly knew how to make love.
My scientific curiosity had been assuaged, but Uncle Albert’s passion hadn’t, and a most difficult situation now developed. Although we waited with as much patience as we could muster for two full hours, Albert showed not the slightest indication of ever intending to depart from his new-found love. Ootek and I wished to return to the cabin with Kooa, and we could not wait forever. In some desperation we finally made a sally toward the enamored pair.
Albert stood his ground, or rather he ignored us totally. Even Ootek seemed somewhat uncertain how to proceed after we reached a point not fifteen feet from the lovers without Albert’s having given any sign that he might be inclined to leave. It was a stalemate which was only broken when I, with much reluctance, fired a shot into the ground a little way from where Albert stood.
The shot woke him from his trance. He leaped high into the air and bounded off a dozen yards, but having quickly recovered his equanimity he started to edge back toward us. Meanwhile we had untied the chain, and while Ootek dragged the sullenly reluctant Kooa off toward home, I covered the rear with the rifle.
Albert stayed rig
ht with us. He kept fifteen to twenty yards away, sometimes behind, sometimes on the flanks, sometimes in front; but leave us he would not.
Back at the cabin we again tried to cool his ardor by firing a volley in the air, but this had no effect except to make him withdraw a few yards farther off. There was obviously nothing for it but to take Kooa into the cabin for the night; for to have chained her on the dog-line with her teammates would have resulted in a battle royal between them and Albert.
It was a frightful night. The moment the door closed, Albert broke into a lament. He wailed and whooped and yammered without pause for hours. The dogs responded with a cacophony of shrill insults and counterwails. Kooa joined in by screaming messages of undying love. It was an intolerable situation. By morning Mike was threatening to do some more shooting, and in real earnest.
It was Ootek who saved the day, and possibly Albert’s life as well. He convinced Mike that if he released Kooa, all would be well. She-would not run away, he explained, but would stay in the vicinity of the camp with the wolf. When her period of heat was over she would return home and the wolf would go back to his own kind.
He was perfectly right, as usual. During the next week we sometimes caught glimpses of the lovers walking shoulder to shoulder across some distant ridge. They never went near the den esker, nor did they come close to the cabin. They lived in a world all their own, oblivious to everything except each other.
They were not aware of us, but I was uncomfortably aware of them, and I was glad when, one morning, we found Kooa lying at her old place in the dog-line looking exhausted but satiated.
The next evening Uncle Albert once more joined in the evening ritual chorus at the wolf esker. However, there was now a mellow, self-satisfied quality to his voice that I had never heard before, and it set my teeth on edge. Braggadocio is an emotion which I have never been able to tolerate—not even in wolves.
16
Morning Meat Delivery
SINCE THE removal of the pups to the ravine they had been largely hidden from my view; and so one morning, before Angeline or the two males had returned from the nightly hunt, I made my way to an outcropping of rocks crowned with a scrub of dwarfed spruces which overlooked the ravine from a distance of less than a hundred feet. There was only the faintest puff of wind and it was blowing from the northeast, so that any wolves at the den, or approaching it, would not be likely to get my scent. I settled myself among the spruces and scanned the floor of the ravine.
The entire area (an enclosure about thirty yards long by ten wide) was crisscrossed with trails. As I watched, two pups emerged from a jumble of shattered rocks under one wall of the ravine and scampered down one of the trails toward the tiny stream. They drew up alongside each other at the stream’s edge and plunged their blunt little faces into the water, wagging their stubby tails the while.
They had grown a good deal in the past weeks, and were now about the size of and roughly the same shape as full-grown groundhogs. They were so fat their legs seemed dwarfed, and their woolly gray coats of puppy hair made them look even more rotund. I could see no promise in them of the lithe and magnificent physique which characterized their parents.
A third pup emerged into view a little farther down the gully, dragging with him the well-chewed scapula of a caribou. He was growling over it as if it were alive and dangerous, and the pups by the stream heard him, lifted their dripping faces, and then bounced off in his direction.
A free-for-all now developed and the air was filled with puppy growls and shrill yips of outrage as one or another of the little beasts sank his needle teeth into a brother’s leg. The fourth pup appeared and flung himself into the melee with an ecstatic squeal of pleasure.
After four or five minutes of this internecine warfare a raven flew low over the gully, and as his shadow slipped past the pups they abandoned the bone and scuttled for shelter. But this was evidently only part of the game, for they emerged again at once showing no signs of real fear. While two of them went back to battling over the bone, the other two ambled off to the muskeg patch and began sniffing about for mice.
Any mice which still remained in this small area must have become exceptionally cagy. After a few minutes of perfunctory snuffling, and one or two attempts to burrow into the muck, these pups gave up the attempt to hunt and started playing with each other.
It was at this moment that Angeline returned.
I was so engrossed in watching the pups that I was not aware of her presence until I heard a deep whine near at hand. The pups heard it too, and we all swiveled our heads to see Angeline at the edge of the ravine. The pups instantly abandoned their games and set up a shrill yammer of excitement, one of them even standing up on his pudgy hindlegs and pawing the air in joyful anticipation.
Angeline watched them for a second or two, poised and lovely, then leaped over the rim and down to the valley floor, where she was mobbed. She sniffed each pup, turning some of them right over on their backs in the process, then she hunched her shoulders and began to retch.
Although I should have known what to expect, I was caught off guard and for a horrible moment was afraid she had eaten poison. Nothing of the kind. After several convulsive motions she brought up what appeared to be at least ten pounds of partly digested meat, then she leaped out of the way and lay down to watch the pups go to it.
If the morning meat delivery made me somewhat squeamish, it did not inhibit the pups. With single-minded voracity they waded into their breakfast while Angeline watched them tolerantly, making no attempt to correct their appalling manners.
Breakfast finished—and not a scrap remained for lunch—the pups simply keeled over where they stood—bloated, and evidently incapable of any further hellery for the moment.
The somnolence of a hot summer morning descended on us all. Very soon I was the only one still awake, and I was having a hard time staying that way. I would have liked to ease my position a little and have a stretch; but I did not dare move, for I was so close to the wolves and the silence was so complete that they would have heard the slightest sound I made.
It may be indelicate of me to mention it, but I seem to have been equipped at birth with the equivalent of an echo chamber in my stomach regions. When I am hungry, or even sometimes when I am not, this portion of my anatomy becomes autonomous and begins producing noises of a startling variety and volume and of a carrying power which has to be heard to be believed. There is nothing I can do about it, although, over the years I have at least learned how to mitigate the consequences by pretending, with some skill, that I am not involved, and that the rumblings which others hear do not proceed from me.
My demon drummer of the nether depths now chose to do his stuff, and the resultant cacophony rolled through the hush of the morning like distant thunder.
Angeline woke with a start. Her head went up and she listened intently, but with a puzzled expression. When the sounds continued (despite everything I could do to muffle them) she got slowly to her feet and, after a glance at the pups, as if to assure herself that they were not responsible, she cocked a speculative eye at the cloudless sky above. It held no solution to the mystery. Thoroughly aroused now, she began trying to track down the sounds.
This was no easy task, for there is a pronounced ventriloquial effect to abdominal noises in general and to mine in particular. After walking up and down the ravine twice, Angeline seemed no closer to satisfying her mounting curiosity.
I was undecided whether to attempt a retreat or whether to stand my ground in the hopes that my internal orchestra would exhaust itself; but the orchestra showed that it was still full of vim and vigor by producing a new and protracted rumble, of earth-shaking proportions. Moments later Angeline’s head appeared over the rim of the gully about ten feet from me.
We stared mutely into each other’s eyes for several seconds. At least she was mute, and I was trying very hard to be, but with limited success. It was an extraordinarily embarrassing predicament: the more I had seen of Angeline,
the higher my regard for her had risen; I valued her good opinion, and I did not want to appear foolish in her eyes.
However I may have appeared, I felt extremely foolish. Her sudden appearance seemed to stimulate my intestinal musicians to more splendid efforts, and, before I could think of any feasible way of excusing myself, Angeline wrinkled her lips, bared her superb white teeth in an expression of cold disdain, and vanished.
Hastily abandoning my hiding place, I ran after her to the edge of the ravine; but I arrived too late even to apologize. All I saw of her was a scornful flick of her beautiful tail as she disappeared into the warren of crevices on the far side of the gully, driving her pups before her.
17
Visitors from Hidden Valley
ALTHOUGH I continued my vigil at the observation tent well into July, I did not add much to my knowledge of the wolves. Because the pups were growing rapidly and needed increasingly large quantities of food, George, Angeline and Albert were forced to devote most of their energy and time to hunting far afield. During the brief periods when they were at the den they spent most of their time sleeping, since finding food for the pups had become an exhausting business. Nevertheless, occasionally they were still able to surprise me.
One day the wolves killed a caribou close to home and this convenient food supply gave them an opportunity to take a holiday. They did not go hunting at all that night, but stayed near the den and rested.
The next morning dawned fine and warm, and a general air of contented lassitude seemed to overcome all three. Angeline lay at her ease on the rocks overlooking the summer den, while George and Albert rested in sandy beds on the esker ridge. The only signs of life from any of them through the long morning were occasional changes of position, and lazy looks about the countryside.
Toward noon, Albert roused himself and meandered down to the bay to get a drink Then for an hour or two he hunted sculpins in a desultory fashion, after which he started back toward his bed. When he was halfway there he had to stop to relieve himself—an effort which seemed to exhaust him so thoroughly that he gave up the idea of going back to the crest of the esker and sprawled out where he was instead. His head instantly began to droop, and he was soon asleep.
