by Nick Jans
Sometimes, for reasons known only to himself, Romeo would take up with a little-known human. My neighbor Kim Turley, by his own admission, had few doings with the wolf, beyond occasional sightings. However, something extraordinary occurred between them one April day. Turley and his wife, Barbara, dedicated outdoors people and the cofounders of the Juneau Alpine Club, had run the ski loop out on the lake for nine mornings in a row. Each day, they saw Romeo lying in one of his usual waiting places. But on the tenth day, Romeo rose and trotted along behind them, following, in Kim’s words, “as if he were our dog, just a few feet behind. He just seemed lonely and wanted the company.” The couple and wolf trotted the entire four-mile circle together; Romeo stopped only as they left the lake. “I’ve never had an experience like that in my life,” Turley murmured. When I think of Kim, and what I know passed between the wolf and me over the years, Harry’s quiet claims seem not only plausible, but likely.
Of all my times with the wolf, some much more action packed and dramatic, this is the one that keeps coming back. One warm April afternoon, Romeo, Gus, and I dozed together out on the ice near the river mouth, me with my head on my pack, skis off; Gus with his head on my thigh; Romeo with his muzzle resting between his outstretched front paws. It was one of those still days when you could hear snowdrifts collapsing in hisses, the sun so dazzling off the white-crusted ice that we seemed suspended on a cloud, bathed in light radiating from below. Now and then the wolf would slit open an eye to check around, then settle back for another short snooze, and I’d do the same. Maybe twenty feet separated us, but in trusting enough to shut his eyes and sleep with me so near, he might as well have put his head alongside Gus’s on my leg. There we lay, three different species bound by a complex, often bitter history, taking simple comfort in the others’ presence, the sun’s warmth, and the passing of another winter. That afternoon remains with me, one of those clear, still moments that grace the edge of dreams. When Gus and I finally rose, Romeo did the same, yawned and stretched, then lay back down and watched us glide away, toward the alien world from which we’d come. I recall looking back as he dwindled to a dark point against the snow, as if for the last time. I watched hard, hoping to remember.
The Afghans
11
Pugs and Pomeranians
February–April 2007
With all the politically charged background and human drama percolating, the last thing the wolf needed was a spate of negative dog encounters. Call it bad luck or foregone conclusion, that’s exactly where the winter of 2006–2007 led. The season began well enough, with the pattern we’d come to expect: increasing sightings from late summer through the autumn, and almost daily, serial dog interactions out on the lake once the ice set, plus sporadic, sometimes startling cameos outside Romeo’s core territory. His return from the dead that summer had no doubt galvanized his base and gained new supporters. His apparent loss had reminded us of what we had, and the collective response had focused and knitted tighter the community that embraced him. All the space his story had garnered in newsprint, radio, and conversation had stirred interest among those who had yet to see the wolf. No wonder more people came to the lake than ever: to discover what the fuss was about, or connect again with what they already had felt. And on top of all that, the Harry and Hyde show was playing at a lake near you. The hydra-headed management issue confronting us all was rooted in a simple matter of ratio: triple the viewers, and still just one wolf—increasingly and inevitably relaxed and tolerant, and so ever more accessible. No matter, either, that the vast majority wanted to do right. A varying combination of factors—inexperience and a sense of false familiarity among many, often bordering on crowd mentality (where whatever you’re doing must be okay because everyone else is doing it)—led toward bad judgment and, in some cases, flat-out disregard. Plus the same old hard-core crowd wanted Romeo dead, on general principles. You didn’t have to be John Fogerty to see a bad moon rising.
Scarcely into the winter, a pair of bizarre, bookend incidents highlighted how near we’d drifted to the edge. I was direct witness to one and missed the other by a matter of seconds. I’d taken to watching the watchers more than the wolf, whenever I could. By then, there was scarcely any separation between the clutter of everyday life and keeping an eye out for Romeo and his followers. In the middle of writing, shoveling the deck, or making dinner, a wrinkle of motion out on the lake would catch my eye, and I’d hit my inner pause button to peer into my spotting scope or binoculars, sometimes for a minute, often much more. Maybe it would be the wolf alone, or the wolf with some of his regular dog buddies and viewers—no big deal. Any newcomers, canine and human, drew extra scrutiny. If something didn’t look right (maybe an overeager neophyte pushing the wolf too hard, or a crowd scene developing), I might throw on ski gear and pole over for a closer look. I knew I wasn’t a cop, and my first choice, always, was to let everyone mind their own business. But if someone was putting Romeo in a tight spot, accidentally or otherwise, I felt bound to nudge things toward the better if I could. Just by skiing past with a dog or two loping behind me, I could often entice the wolf to break off from an iffy situation and follow along for a bit. If someone was clearly up to no good—egging on a reactive dog toward the wolf, for example, or in one instance, trying to dive-bomb him with a radio-controlled plane—I’d approach, often wearing a khaki jacket that looked like it might be enforcement agency issue, pull out a long lens, point it toward the action, and snap away. That was usually enough to diffuse the party. Or I drew closer, struck up a casual conversation, and worked around to suggesting that the wolf might need a bit more space. Whether people smiled and nodded or got huffy (and a few surely did), pretty much everyone backed off. A couple of times, both at twilight, I slid between a freaked-out dog-walker and a suddenly too-close-for-comfort, intent and whining wolf and escorted the visitors off the ice. I couldn’t blame some woman with a kid and a Lab puppy for panicking, even if the wolf was just being sociable, and especially during the late-February into March mating season, when he was noticeably more aggressive about trying to herd dogs away from parking lots, back out onto the ice—even if his advances never warmed past that. Whether Romeo actually responded to my no command, or just to tone and body language (a couple of times, I extended a ski pole between him and a dog, once almost tapping him on the nose), he no doubt got the message and backed off a few yards. Meanwhile, I combined my daily workouts with a chance to at least tip my hat past the hubbub toward the wolf I loved. Badges? I took to murmuring toward him and to no one in particular. We don’t need no stinkin’ badges.
As for actual enforcement, this was the Forest Service’s turf. They could have handed out fines at $150 a pop for wildlife harassment to anyone who either approached the wolf too closely or didn’t stop their dogs from doing the same; and considering that many of the potential violations took place out in the open, visible from a road, trailhead, or parking lot, you’d think the law might have been more active. But from the start, the Forest Service had opted for a low-profile presence when it came to Romeo, and the one officer patrolling the glacier area had yet to write a single citation involving the wolf, going back to his first appearances in 2003. As District Ranger Pete Griffin later explained to me, they didn’t have the manpower or inclination to engage in preventative enforcement of what they saw as a nonproblem. Anyhow, most of the activity occurred in the tourist off-season, on the western lobe of the lake, out of sight of the visitor center, and apparently out of mind.
Meanwhile, dealing with either Harry’s or Hyde’s gallery was a touchy matter. Even if I didn’t approve of the entire scene, I respected the ability of each man to handle both himself and hangers-on near the wolf. Generally, I’d observe on and off from afar, or skirt by for a glance on my way around the lake. Once, though, to make a point, I trotted out Anita’s goofball mutt Sugar on the beach behind our house when Harry’s audience was out in force, and chucked a few tennis balls to egg the Big Shug into his manic, slobber-and-fet
ch routine. Sure enough, Romeo peeled off and came bounding from a half mile away, deserting his entourage to leap in apparent joy, and flash a wide wolf grin at the old dog pal he hadn’t seen in ages. The party up the ice quickly dissolved.
One mild, sunny Saturday halfway through January, a swirl of activity near the Big Rock warranted a ski-by. The usual crew was on station: Harry and Brittain at the fore, several guys with sizeable camera gear, and an elderly couple with a pair of Afghans—slim, high-shouldered sight hounds originally bred on the central Asia steppe to chase down swift wild prey, which must have sometimes included wolves. Romeo and Brittain mouth-wrestling and play-jostling would serve as opening act and recurring theme, interspersed with the wolf trotting back and forth, sniffing and posturing with dogs, or lying nearby, studying the action. Then the older woman would set the two Afghans (themselves a bit over the hill) off leash, and they’d gallop creakily down the ice in the bright, blue-white day, with Romeo keeping easy stride a few paces back, wolf and dogs both enjoying the companionship and the chance to run against each other, just for the hey of it—hardly a situation, one might surmise, that the shapers of the breed envisioned. Then a rest period, more Romeo and Brittain tussling, some more group sniff-arounds, and maybe another dash with the Afghans.
The format of this particular get-together was normal enough, if you could call it that. As always, there were a couple of first-timers who had heard about the show, and others who just happened to be on the scene, so a few new dogs and humans were stirred into the mix. But this particular mild, sunny weekend day, cars kept pulling up, and more adults and kids and dogs piled out along the snowy shore, some of them obviously green, and too many, too spread out for Harry to manage. Most of the two dozen or more folks and half-dozen extra dogs had no idea who Harry was, anyhow. I pulled up with Gus at a hundred yards, unslung my camera, and started pointing and framing—not hoping to move anyone away (with so many people, everyone was past noticing another camera), but to capture the crazy carnival atmosphere swirling around the wolf, one of the more surreal interfaces between humans and wildlife that I’d ever witnessed. Romeo trotted back and forth, whining, tongue lolling, drawn into the same strange daze as everyone else. No doubt warm and a bit overstimulated, he finally trotted out onto the ice and lay down about seventy yards from me and Gus. After minutes of inaction, and the crowd getting restless and some edging closer, Harry strode out with Brittain, apparently to reassure Romeo and guide him away from the mob. Behind him, a three-year-old toddler wearing a bright red jester’s cap and snowsuit picked that moment to flop down near his parents and throw a five-star tantrum, thrashing and belting out a high-pitched wounded-animal shriek. The wolf’s head snapped erect as he stared, locked on to that small, blood-red spot squirming and squealing on the snow, hardly recognizable as a human shape. Oh shit, I hissed to myself. No one else seemed to realize Romeo’s prey stimulus button had been pushed, and how much we were asking of him. Harry, with the crunch of snow echoing in his ears, and figuring the wolf was just focused on him, must not have heard the kid and surely didn’t see him. Neither did he see the roly-poly, tan-gray pug that had broken off from the crowd to trot after him and Brittain, straight toward the wolf. As it passed Harry and saw the wolf, the dog lost its footing and skidded. Romeo tensed, mane up, eyes fixed on that small, incoming creature. With Harry just several paces away, he dashed forward, snatched the hapless pug, and loped for the Dredge Lakes shore with it crosswise in his mouth. Almost simultaneously, Harry, who himself slipped and fell, shouted “No!” and the wolf abruptly dropped the little dog onto the ice and kept going.
I watched the whole sequence through my viewfinder, not even aware I had the shutter button held down. The pug’s owner, a local physician and Romeo supporter, scrambled out to retrieve his dazed pet. Other than an understandable fit of trembling and some bruises, it seemed little worse for wear, despite being dangled from jaws capable of exerting more than a thousand pounds of pressure per square inch. With the wolf gone, the crowd sifted off, and it was just another winter day on the lake.
All that was crazy enough, but damned if just a few days later Romeo didn’t snatch a second pug, an event so similar it could have been a replay of the first—this time within a few feet of John Hyde and his followers, along the Dredge Lakes shore. Again, the wolf had apparently responded to a single sharp shout (this time from Hyde) and released the animal posthaste. I skied up seconds after Romeo had vanished into the willows; the pug, though quivering and saliva-coated, six feet from me, was once more unharmed. “That’s your fault!” Hyde yelled toward the owner, a local hobby photographer who had encouraged the little dog to approach the wolf, so he could get a picture. The guy seemed totally unaware of just what lay at stake. “No big deal, that’s just my wife’s dog anyhow,” I heard him wisecrack to the several nonplussed photographers standing there. And sure enough, he got his shot—Romeo carrying off his dog—and landed it on the front page of the state’s largest paper, the Anchorage Daily News, underscored by the somewhat misleading caption: “Juneau Predator.” Never mind the fine print with the outcome; most people apparently never read that far.
Set off by that image and word of mouth about both incidents, rumor spread that the wolf was on a dog-devouring rampage. Fist-banging letters to the Empire further fanned the rhetorical flames that once more licked through town: Do something, only a matter of time before he grabs someone . . . shoot the wolf . . . relocate the wolf . . . leave him the hell alone . . . and so on. Lost in the hoopla were the simple details that both tiny dogs had emerged without shedding a drop of blood; that the wolf had apparently responded to human direction not once, but twice; and that the root cause, both times, had been questionable behavior not by his species, but ours. Not to mention, both had occurred within the boundaries of the nation’s largest national forest, in by far the wildest of the fifty states. Where else on this planet was a wolf supposed to live?
If human behavior and motives were puzzling in these matters, the wolf’s were no less so. You could interpret those bizarre twin incidents as aborted predatory attempts; but if so, what triggered them? Since Tank the beagle’s disappearance, nearly two years before, Romeo had enjoyed thousands of close, sociable contacts with hundreds of canines (though far fewer with dogs under twenty pounds). Maybe both pugs and Tank were indeed cases of mistaken identity, and if Romeo didn’t quite recognize them as dogs, you can hardly blame him. It could be that something unique about a pug’s movement, appearance, or coloration had triggered the reaction; or perhaps that particular breed being involved twice, in two mirror-image incidents, was freakish coincidence. Considering that the dogs were both released unharmed, and the wolf’s history of friendly intentions, you have to wonder if he was playing or maybe puppy-napping—a precedent set with the young Akita, two years before. However, when I recall the first pug grab, including Romeo’s intense body language, the speed and force with which he pounced (frozen in one of my pictures), I find it hard to completely dismiss the predatory interpretation, perhaps set in motion by the stimulus of that screaming little kid in the snow and transferred over to the dog. As far as not killing or even hurting that pug, he didn’t have to—at least not just then. The dog was hanging helpless in his jaws. Plenty of accounts confirm that wolves are often content to merely subdue, rather than kill, prey before eating it. The wolf may have not bothered with a fatal bite at that point because it wasn’t necessary. But who’s to say he wouldn’t have released each dog without human intervention, as he had with the Akita puppy? In fact, maybe shouts had nothing to do with the wolf’s actions, and he was simply involved in some game that ended in catch-and-release. In the strange case of the double pugs, about all we can do is shrug and flip a coin. The circumstantial evidence for friendly versus predatory motive on the wolf’s part balances out damn near dead even, with no sure verdict possible.
Faced with the general uproar, Fish and Game was forced to come up with some sort of response, and once agai
n, it was restraint. The department had every justification it needed for relocation, if so inclined. The trend toward trouble was obvious; perhaps it was time to step in for the good of wolf and humans alike. Still, Fish and Game was no doubt wary of public reaction; and besides, nothing had really happened. The department biologists seemed as baffled and mesmerized as the rest of us. Area Biologist Ryan Scott, accompanied by a dog to bait the wolf in, conducted a couple of hazing missions to the lake, with observational follow-ups. He opted for multiple-report pyrotechnic shotgun rounds designed to startle the wolf (similar in sound to a string of air-bursting firecrackers) and noted, “The immediate results . . . were that the wolf departed the area quickly, and my perception is that the animal’s interactions with people and dogs were fewer for 2–3 weeks.” In an incensed letter to the Empire, our friend Anita suggested a slightly different hazing approach: “Adverse conditioning is definitely the answer to solving the wolf problem at the Mendenhall Glacier. A few well-placed rubber bullets or bean bags should send the right message to the lamebrains who deliberately encourage their dogs to approach the wolf and the photographers who crowd and relentlessly seek him in pursuit of their own selfish interests. It’s only fair they should be the ones—not Romeo—to be on the receiving end of a little behavior modification, because these people caused the problem in the first place.”
