A Wolf Called Romeo

by Nick Jans

  Around the courtroom, people traded glances, some incredulous, others hard-eyed. At that moment, we understood the full extent to which we’d been marginalized. The wolf belonged to the state. Paradoxically, we, its law-abiding citizens, were nonentities—observers without importance or voice in the proceedings. There was no provision for any member of the community to take a turn at the microphone and address Romeo’s killer, as nearly the whole gallery would have done. As Myers walked free, passing close enough to where I stood near the door that I turned my shoulder to let him pass, a thick-throated silence hung in the air. No doubt the letter of the law had been served in the matter of State of Alaska v. Park Myers III, but what about justice? Even a child would know there was none, and never would be. We might as well have trusted some clumsy machine to restore life to a flower, reattach each petal, breathe life into its wilted stem.

  That failure, though, couldn’t forgive our own. On the drive home, Sherrie stared straight ahead, tearless, jaw quivering. “What was wrong with us?” she muttered. “What the hell was wrong with all of us, just sitting there, saying nothing? We could have all jumped up and started shouting, ‘You bastard! You murdering bastard!’ All of us together. That was our chance. My only chance to say or do something that mattered, and I just sat there. We all just sat there.” What would the court have done with such an outburst? Arrested us all, charged everyone with contempt, fined us, thrown us in jail? Any penalty would have been worth it, a moment we would have carried with us always, a story to remind ourselves of who we truly were. Instead, we’re condemned to the echoes of our own silence.

  District Attorney Gardner had made one beau geste to those who knew the wolf. At the end of Judge Levy’s pronouncement of sentence, the prosecution introduced a final piece of evidence—one that had no direct bearing on the case, yet was everything to us. As Trooper Frenzel unfurled the contents of a black plastic trash bag and draped it over a display easel, a collective gasp rose from the courtroom. There was no mistaking the grizzled patterns around the jaw, the minor scars and marks here and there, the patches of gray behind his forelegs. Before us, empty of life, hung the husk of the wolf we called Romeo. After the gavel came down, the tanned hide was moved to the courthouse foyer, with a trooper standing guard a few feet away. We gathered there, speaking in low tones, taking turns to stand near, brush a hand along his back, peer into sightless eyes, and whisper farewell. Though we’d known the wolf was gone, now we felt the ache of forever.

  Jeff Peacock’s legal reckoning would provide even less satisfaction. Though Judge Levy had originally insisted that Peacock would return to Juneau to face the court in person, he ended up appearing via telephone from Pennsylvania, due to health issues we guessed had been exaggerated and seemed conveniently timed. The change of plea hearing, also orchestrated by David Mallet, snuck into the court docket in early January of 2011 with so little fanfare that most Juneauites didn’t realize it had occurred until they read about it the next day. With eighteen months in jail and $13,000 in fines suspended, Peacock was ordered to pay $2,600 in total fines and restitution, serve three years’ probation, forfeit Alaska hunting and fishing rights for that same period, and endure one of Judge Levy’s mild-mannered rebukes. That was the best the state could manage: it provided justice to neither wolf, nor dead bears, nor us—just to itself, on its own terms. The system had taken care of itself; it was up to us to do the same.

  Of course we mourned—then, as now, with more pain sweeping ahead down the trails we’d all walk over the years, glimpsing in a flicker of shadow a familiar shape, straining to hear a distant howl in the wind. We mourned for what we knew was as lost as any miracle could ever be, mourned, too, for what each of us might have done or not done, a small choice, maybe, passed at the time with scarce notice: picking up a ringing telephone instead of walking out a door, making a snap decision about what trail we might hike on a given day—hell, stopping for coffee? Who knows what act, by whom, might have shifted a million interwoven sequences so the wolf would have trotted on? As for me, if saving this one wolf had somehow offered a glimmer of redemption, I had utterly failed. Harry Robinson, perhaps more than any of us, is visited by the ghost of all he might have done. His self-condemnation rings simple, absolute. “I let my friend down,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t there when he needed me.” A fond thought, to believe that any small act, from any of us, might have saved the wolf. Like his Shakespearian namesake, Romeo’s die was cast by his nature, shaped by forces beyond his and our horizon. In the end, Harry, and all who loved Romeo, were fortune’s fools.

  We endured the head shaking, pontificating, and outright ridicule of those who didn’t know or understand, and never would. Just a wolf, they said, as if he were a rusted-out truck or a pile of rotting wood. Move on. One snide comment to the Empire suggested Romeo’s end as a tanned hide was a “perfect” example of resource utilization. The official version of things—the story we heard in snippets, passed down from authorities—was pointed in its blame. People had loved the wolf to death, lured him by thoughtless, selfish behavior toward a doom so sure they all saw it coming. There are men wearing the uniforms of four agencies—two state, two federal—who more than believe that; they call it true. I pass them in lines at the bank and hardware store; I may nod and chat with some, and not recognize others. This is the story they know, the one that’s almost always right.

  On its surface, the saga of Romeo the wolf may well seem a cautionary tale of wildlife habituation gone wrong. Wolves and people just don’t mix, and that maxim was once more proven. However, the facts don’t match the narrative. The black wolf didn’t become habituated over time, but arrived the way he was: engaging our dogs and snatching toys in those first days among us. Nor did he seem the product of food conditioning; he bore none of its negative marks. And there was no driving him off; when we tried, he returned. If we had succeeded, he would have been pushed into even more perilous straits. As a sentient, intelligent being, he made a choice to live where he did, and to interact with us and our dogs—not only on his own social terms, but through an adaptive understanding of our rules. While Myers and Peacock may have taken great pleasure in killing a “famous” wolf, they would have shot him or any other animal just the same, as they poached nameless, tiny bears most hunters would be embarrassed to shoot. The wolf’s celebrity, rather than causing his death, shielded him for an astounding reach of time. Too, according to the court’s own accepted evidence, Romeo was killed in the company of other wolves, in wild country, not in someone’s backyard, and not because of any identified behavior related to habituation. Thus the party line of blame contradicts itself; the state can’t have it both ways. But regardless of where or how he died, one essential fact seems clear: the black wolf wasn’t killed by love, but by its determined, malignant inverse.

  How safe was Romeo among us? Not very, is the short and obvious answer, one that I would have given at any moment over the years. In retrospect, though, consider that he was close to tripling the measured life span of an average wild wolf in Denali National Park—a startlingly brief three years—in a place where wildlife is afforded wide chunks of habitat protected from our kind. Not for weeks or months, but years, the city of Juneau and the black wolf set an unprecedented standard for coexistence and mutual safety between two species conflicted as any on this planet. His survival was not due to the actions of a few, but the tolerance of many, and the restraint of state and federal agencies—not to mention the actions of the wolf himself. If not for two warped outsiders, he might well still be there, waiting by the Big Rock for his adopted pack mates to appear.

  I look back over my shoulder to that black shape curled against the snow, to that spring day years ago that I saw him, as if for the last time. Alone in the stillness of night, Sherrie and the dogs breathing about me, the weight of dreams press against my chest. I try to weep silently, so I don’t waken anyone; I cry not for myself, nor the black wolf, but for all of us, adrift in an increasingly empty world. W
hat can we hope to carry away from such sorrow? But there is another side to the story, a faint glow that flickers and returns, a pulse of auroral fire across a dark sky. Nothing can take away the miracle that was Romeo and the years we spent in his company. Love, not hate, is the burden we carry. But that fact makes it no lighter.

  During the black wolf’s time among us, he brought wonder to thousands, filled a landscape to overflowing, taught many to see the world and his species with fresh eyes. Without knowing or caring, simply by being what he was, he brought people closer: friends and families, but also those who might have never met, if not for his presence. Across the years, I watched hundreds and finally thousands of Juneau residents—two here, a half dozen there, one group after another, out on the broad sounding board of the lake—lean on their ski poles and chat as they watched the wolf playing with dogs, trotting across the ice, or lying in one of his spots at the lake edge; and many times, I took part in such conversations. Talk may have anchored around him, but it percolated outward to include the myriad matters, trifling and larger, that create a woven sense of community—everything from local politics to who got married to where winter-run king salmon might be biting. Thanks to the black wolf, I and many others met, or got to know better, Juneauites from all walks of life—friendships and acquaintances that have endured his passing and the passing of others. He spun context into our lives, drew us closer without our realizing any more than he did. Even those of us who didn’t agree, including on what should and shouldn’t be done with, or to, or around this wolf, had a chance to shape words and thoughts face to face, gain added sense of who we were, individually and collectively, and of what we held as true. So it was that the wolf melded into Juneau’s story and became part of us.

  Two weeks after the trial, its pain still sharp as frost, we stood in the cold bright silence of a late-November day, staring out over the frozen expanse of Mendenhall Lake. Beyond, the mountains rose, cradling the glacier, and all of us, in their arms. More than a hundred people had gathered near the Big Rock to remember and mourn—and many more in spirit. For months afterward, strangers and friends approached me, apologizing that prior plans on a busy weekend, just before Thanksgiving, had drawn them away. Though this was probably the first memorial service for a wolf in Alaska, and maybe in human history, it seemed natural enough—in fact, what circumstances demanded. The crowd included dogs, of course, and construction workers, lawyers, taxi drivers, young and old, hunters, trappers, and vegans. We stood together, air sharp in our lungs, the flow of time transparent, each moment of the wolf among us a stone in a clear-flowing river. I recall standing on a rock and speaking, in turn, after Joel and Harry. I can summon back the emotion, but not my words; and I remember holding up the heavy bronze plaque Joel had commissioned from sculptor Skip Wallen, to be installed on a boulder at the far side of the lake, on a path where it would be seen by tens of thousands of visitors each year, and perhaps—just maybe—a passing wolf. The memorial bears an image of Romeo reclining on the Big Rock, and below, a simple inscription to remind us—one you should read for yourself. As his recorded howls rose into a vacant sky, dogs joined his song, twining a chorus more perfect than human voices could have been.

  Years from now, we’ll tell this story: Once upon a time, there was a wolf called Romeo. Together, we watch him trot across the lake and fade into twilight. And we remember.

  Epilogue

  November 2013

  Years pass, and Romeo is still with us. His name rises often in conversation, and his image adorns walls in dozens of homes. Out near the glacier, you can turn onto Lone Wolf Drive and Black Wolf Way, or sit on the lakeside cedar bench Joel Bennett placed where his wife, Louisa, used to pause and watch for the wolf in her last days. We pass his memorial, mounted on a granite boulder, as we walk toward Nugget Falls, and sometimes pause to visit our memories. The plaque hasn’t become a shrine as some feared; nor has it been vandalized. It’s simply merged into the landscape, become part of Juneau’s story. And, in a town that places high value on coffee and beer, there’s a brand of each named in Romeo’s honor: Heritage Coffee’s Black Wolf Blend and Alaskan Brewing’s Black Wolf IPA (India Pale Ale). At just the right time of a late-winter afternoon, people glimpse what some claim to be Romeo’s ghost: the silhouette of a wolf’s head cast in shadow on a mountainside above downtown Juneau. Back out toward the glacier, many of us who used to wander the west shore of the lake and Dredge now go elsewhere instead. When we do walk those trails, we can’t help looking for those familiar paw prints, or listening for his voice in the wind. As Harry says, it’s too lonely.

  Of course, other wolves pass through. In the year after Romeo’s death, there were repeated sightings of an almost-white wolf in the Montana Creek and glacier area. I wonder if it was the same light-colored animal the old Eskimo woman saw and that I glimpsed in the fog, with Romeo, several years before. Sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of a gray wolf, it approached cars and followed hikers with their dogs. However, those who encountered the white wolf described an unsettling, bold-verging-on-menacing behavior and, instead of relaxed sociability, a cold, inscrutable stare. It was, after all, another wolf, and after a few weeks, it and its pack mate had drifted on.

  A few months after his sentencing, Park Myers III was back to being himself, peddling a strain of high-grade marijuana he called Romeo’s Widow and bragging that he was untouchable, as he truly seemed to be. Nonetheless, he ran afoul of the law again—this time, for unemployment fraud, a felony offense and a violation of his probation. Unlike the first time, he ended up in jail for several days; but after much behind-doors folderol and legal proceedings that are a story in themselves, the state declined to pursue the case or to enforce any of the suspended fines and prison time from the Romeo trial. Once more, Park Myers walked free. A few months later, he and his family were gone, back to Pennsylvania. Aside from $2,000 of forfeited bail money, he never paid a cent of his original fines for killing Romeo, nor performed any documented community service. As for Jeff Peacock, his health problems were real enough, rather than feigned. His hunting days seemed to be over. We don’t dwell on either of them. In the end, they don’t matter much at all.

  As I write on a rain-spattered, late-autumn day, Romeo’s hide lies draped over the couch, close enough that I can reach over and run my hands through the silk-smooth guard hairs along its shoulders. When I first opened the box containing the tanned skin and bleached skull, I didn’t know how I’d react; but I’ve taken a quiet comfort from their presence. They’re here for a few days, on the way to a museum-quality taxidermist. At the request of Mendenhall Glacier visitor center director Ron Marvin, Harry, Joel, and I gave input to the design of an installation for the center—an educational exhibit featuring the wolf reclining on a boulder and his recorded howls. Some, including Joel, thought his remains should be destroyed—perhaps in a fire, high on Mount McGinnis. I almost agreed, but the nod toward preservation prevailed. As Sherrie said quietly, “It’s all we have left of him.” I volunteered to find the right person to breathe the illusion of life back into his eyes. The mount will take at least a year to complete, and its placement at the center will surely face opposition from some, and support from many. Romeo’s future among us is far from certain; but then, it never was.

  Left to right: Joel Bennett, Harry Robinson, Nick Jans, Vic Walker

  Notes

  Chapter 1

  For more on the black wolf as a genetic marker leading to dogs, see “Molecular and Evolutionary History of Melanism in North American Gray Wolves,” by Tovi M. Anderson and others, Science, vol. 323 (March 6, 2009).

  Ballard’s far-ranging doctoral dissertation, “Demographics, Movements, and Predation Rates of Wolves in Northwest Alaska,” is available at http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/186483?mode=full.

  For more on the wayward wolf OR-7 and his rambles (as of autumn 2013 he’s still alive and well) a quick Internet search keying OR-7 will come up with tracking maps and
more. See the California Department of Fish and Wildlife information page for more information on OR-7, http://www.dfg.ca.gov/wildlife/nongame/wolf/. He also has his own Facebook page.

  For more on Alexander Archipelago wolves, see http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wolf.aawolf and http://akwildlife.org/wp-content/up loads/2013/02/Alexander_Archipelago_wolves_final.pdf.

  Vicious: Wolves and Men in America (Yale Press 2004), by Jon T. Coleman, is one of many sources giving detailed coverage to wolf eradication efforts in North America and its underpinnings. His work also details Audubon’s encounter with the trapped wolves that I describe.

  For a catalog of quotes from Lewis and Clark’s journals related to their wolf encounters, see http://www.mnh.si.edu/lewisandclark/index.html?loc=/lewisandclark/journal.cfm?id=984.

  For more on the effects of wolf reintroduction on the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, see William J. Ripple and Robert L. Bestcha’s excellent article “Trophic Cascades in Yellowstone: The First 15 Years After Wolf Reintroduction,” http://fes.forestry.oregonstate.edu/sites/fes.forestry.oregonstate.edu/files/PDFs/Beschta/Ripple_Beschta2012BioCon.pdf.

  Alaska’s figures on total wolf populations are based on extrapolations—basically, well-educated guesses. Counting wolves over such a large area is an all-but-impossible task. However, the latitude between high and low ends of the estimate—five thousand—is large indeed and indicates a huge amount of uncertainty by any scientific standard, raising significant management questions.