City Beasts

by Mark Kurlansky

  He popped his skis out and held them along with his poles and worked his way down the steep trail seated, using his legs. He calculated that by the time he got down to where the other skiers were the trail would become more reasonable and he could start skiing.

  But it was not true that he was unobserved. Yellow eyes were following him. Nose could not help but think that if he ever wanted to take a human, this would be the one. The way he traveled sliding on his back, completely exposed, he could pounce and tear his throat out in a matter of seconds—not that he would ever do such a thing. It wasn’t allowed. He lay comfortably in the snow, his thick fur protecting him from the cold wind that blew the hairs in the wrong direction. The $4,000 LaMotte had paid for skiwear was not nearly as impenetrable, but fear kept the movie star warm. Nose had to get back to the pack. Legs, a lean woman who worked for the Lady, would be there, and he liked her and she would not be happy if she smelled human on him.

  * * *

  Every day just before sunset, Cathy, the science teacher, would struggle into a blue Lycra running outfit that kept her warm and revealed the body her students only dreamed of. Her husband urged her not to go.

  “There are wolves out there.”

  “You just read that. Nobody ever sees them.”

  “Fish and Wildlife brought them. And the pack gets bigger every year.”

  “Name one person who has seen a wolf.”

  “I hear them every night.”

  “Coyotes.”

  “And are coyotes killing the sheep?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And the elk and moose? They aren’t American wolves. They brought them in from Canada. And they’re really aggressive.”

  “That’s silly,” she said, and chuckled as she trotted off toward the trail. “Since when are Canadians more aggressive?”

  * * *

  Just like the Lady, Etxegarray’s fears and beliefs were embedded in him from the memories of ancestors. His father had been born on a small farm on a slope of the Pyrenees, so steep it seemed you could fall off, above the little river town of Arnéguy. The farm was so close to the border that the family was not sure if it was in France or Spain. Nor did they care. They were Basques and spoke their ancient language and raised pigs and chickens and sheep and grew some corn for feed with beans planted in between the rows and they made strong and flavorful cheese from the pungent milk of sheep that grazed on the purple-and-gray scrub of the high mountains. With black-and-white dogs they guarded their sheep against bears and their home against officials from Paris and Madrid.

  When Etxegarray’s grandfather died the older brother took over the farm and his father went to America, where he found work herding a hundred thousand sheep in Idaho. He had never looked after more than fifty in Arnéguy.

  There were bears and he occasionally shot one. He tried to hunt the wolves, too, but he could never find them. He knew they were there only from tracks in the snow and the remains of the sheep they killed. A ranchers’ association was paying bounties for dead wolves. You could just cut off the nose and bring it in and get twenty dollars, which was a lot better than the five-cent bounty on magpies. Magpies were good to kill because they ate the eggs of ground-nesting birds. You could kill dozens in an afternoon, but you made more money with one wolf nose. There was also a bounty on coyotes. It was a kind of golden age when you could get paid to kill.

  Still, no one could get wolves. Etxegarray’s father started filling the carcasses of dead sheep with strychnine, which he could buy in Twin Falls. Then he saw wolves. There would be four or five dead ones near a sheep carcass. This was why the Lady, who had the gift of memory, did not like the pack to return to a kill. She wanted them to take what they could at the moment of the kill and not go back for the rest.

  Etxegarray, unlike the Lady, did not have a memory of all this unless, like a wolf, the memory was there without his knowing it. When Fish and Game wanted to reintroduce wolves, he opposed it by instinct. And he continued to oppose it and argued that the packs were getting too big and there needed to be a hunt to “better manage the population.”

  Being a locavore chef, Annie had close relations with the local ranchers and farmers. But she did not want to get involved in their fight about wolves. She was an easterner, and she found it exciting to live in a place that had “wild wolves.” “Wild” was a very important word to her and often appeared on her menus to describe both plants and animals—wild trout and wild thyme and wild berries.

  Annie’s current menu included the delicately flavored spring lamb from Etxegarray, and she also bought cheese from him. But she was wary of the big idea he had brought to the restaurant. “It’s not that everyone is going to start cooking up wolves,” Etxegarray argued.

  “I wouldn’t think so,” said Annie. “They’re a protected species.” That was when Etxegarray remembered that he was dealing with an easterner.

  “Look,” he said. “You just make up the recipe. Publish it in the paper and people will start thinking about wolves as prey, not as innocent victims to be protected.”

  “But aren’t they innocent victims?”

  “Wolves?” Etxegarray laughed. “The only thing the wolf cares about is killing. He’s a killing machine.”

  Dag Olsen came through the door with a pile of newspapers.

  “Here’s your Times,” said Annie.

  Clement Stedlick, who came down every morning to read the Times with a double espresso and hoped that someone would say something that he could use, said, “I thought they were supposed to come in at seven.”

  Dag Olsen, a large, thickset man, made thicker by a red plaid wool coat, walked over to Clement Stedlick, seated with a fountain pen and a notepad next to his now empty espresso cup, and stared down at him with his glacier-blue eyes and ten-day stubble on his broad face from chin to crown. “You the one I heard was complaining?”

  “I like to read the Times. Why are you so late?” said Clement in a voice he tried to make friendly-sounding.

  “You think I need this? I make twenty-seven cents a paper. Look at my truck.” He pointed through the window at a red pickup truck. “Goddamn deer hit me. How many papers do I have to deliver to get that fixed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How many do you think? And you’re going to complain. I’ll just stop bringing them.”

  “I’m very grateful that you bring them. I’ve been wanting to thank you.” Clement stood up to shake Olsen’s hand, but he wouldn’t take it. Clement still held up his smile. “It’s great that you do this. Everyone appreciates it.”

  “Just stop your complaining,” said Olsen, and he walked out muttering, “Fucking goddamn deer.”

  Annie could not help laughing, and she said to Etxegarray, “You worry about the wolves while poor Dag gets attacked by deer.”

  Etxegarray smiled. “I dream of a world where the sheep can attack—where sheep eat wolves.”

  “If sheep ate wolves,” said Annie, “you would herd wolves and complain about sheep.”

  Clement dropped his New York Times, twisted the cap off his fountain pen, scribbled in his notebook, paid his check, and left.

  Back in his glassed-in house he wrote:

  The wolves were milling restlessly. The wolf dogs seemed nervous.

  Six sheep had come down from the mountains. They were big and fat and had great woolly coats and would not be satisfied until they had smothered a few wolves. Terror showed in the wolves’ eyes.

  * * *

  Etxegarray was driving out to the ranch when Juanito sauntered up to the road on horseback and waved for him to stop. The ground was still hard from winter and made a crusty sound against his tires. Juanito spoke to him in soft Peruvian Spanish, which Etxegarray, whose father had taught him Basque but not French or Spanish, could not quite make out. Juanito was so wrapped in his purple-patterned blanket that it looked and even so
unded like a blanket was speaking to him. Juanito had something to show him, and Etxegarray followed the horse through the snowy brush on foot. The snow was melting in the field, but it was not easy going, and finally he climbed up on Juanito’s horse to go the rest of the way through the gray and spiky winter sagebrush.

  Etxegarray felt a primordial fury rise up in him as he surveyed the scene. The snow was splattered brown with old blood. Four gutted, partially eaten sheep were lying on their sides. Etxegarray shook his head at the wastefulness of wolves. They didn’t even come back for the rest of the meat.

  Juanito was pleased that he had this evidence to show him. He lived in a small trailer on a mountain and could hear the wolves all night. He was terrified but did not want to say so because he did not want to go back to Peru.

  Against a rise, the clay-red snow was churned up where there had been a huge struggle and there was Apollo, Etxegarray’s stately white Great Pyrenees guard dog. He had tried to defend the sheep but had been overwhelmed. There must have been a lot of them. One had torn his nose clear off his blood-soaked face. “The nose,” said Etxegarray. What kind of animal takes noses? he thought, not even remembering his father’s stories of the twenty-dollar bounties for wolf noses.

  * * *

  It was about this time that Annie started noticing that Leopold was missing. Leopold was a fluffy white Maltese. He was part of the restaurant. All the customers knew Leopold, petted him on the way in and out of the restaurant. Leopold had a piece of green carpet that he rested on near the door to make himself available for customer pettings. But Leopold had not been seen in three weeks and Etxegarray was the first of several people to suggest to Annie that he had been eaten by wolves.

  “They eat dogs, you know,” Etxegarray heartlessly pointed out.

  It was only one week later that the Idaho Mountain Express ran her recipe:

  CIVET OF WILD WOLF

  Any part of the wolf will work for this recipe, although haunches are recommended.

  Cut the wild wolf meat into cubes. Place in a large earthenware bowl. Cover with red wine from Oregon or Washington and two ounces of local cider vinegar (available in Bellevue). Add wild juniper berries and wild rosemary (both found on the outskirts of Sawtooth National Forest—no harvesting in the forest), eight black peppercorns, and a minced garlic head from Hailey. Add four drops cold-pressed virgin olive oil. Let stand in a room that is not overheated for two days.

  Fry cubes of Idaho bacon in a large pot with cold-pressed virgin olive oil. Remove wild wolf meat and pat dry. Dust in unbleached organic flour. Fry meat in bacon and olive oil. Add marinade and stew slowly for three hours until liquid is dark and reduced. Add one shot brandy and flame it. Add half a cup heavy cream (the local cream will be at its best in about one month). Cook a few minutes on high heat, until sauce is thick. Garnish with local wild green onions.

  “There,” Annie said in a vengeful voice. “You can’t get much more locavore than that.” And she noted with satisfaction that she had used the word “wild” six times in the recipe.

  But it was probably a mistake. Her customers were not ranchers and did not find animals that they had raised from birth ripped apart in an open field. Her locavore clientele were the kind of people that in Idaho were known with increasing frequency as wolf lovers. After all, wolves were locavores. Many stopped going to her restaurant, which in turn meant that she had to reduce her order from Etxegarray. He regarded this as one more example of his business being hurt by the wolves. But he told Annie not to worry. “First time they eat a skier they will all be back, demanding you put the dish on your menu.”

  Clement Stedlick was not angry about the wolf recipe. He was just too busy on his new book to come down for his morning espresso and newspaper. Dag Olsen bragged that he had scared him off. But it wasn’t that. It was the new book. Already that morning he had written . . .

  Buck took one look at the nervous wolves, looking like they were about to bolt.

  “Damn greenhorn’s spooking the wolves,” he shouted, and went looking for young Billy Burnett. And there he was with his big gray sweater with cable stitching.

  “Get that damn sweater off. Don’t you know wolves are afraid of wool?”

  “But it’s freezing.”

  “You ever see a wolfman with wool on? Get a fleece. Now get that thing off before the wolves bolt and we spend half the winter trying to round them up again.”

  “But it’s cold.”

  “Who ever said wolfing was going to be easy?”

  Clement sipped his coffee—not nearly as good as Annie’s espresso, but he couldn’t stop now. This was good, he thought. Different, weird, good.

  * * *

  Rumors were spreading. People were warned to keep their dogs and children inside. There were stories of missing children who had been, depending on who was telling the story, either eaten by wolves or adopted by them. No one could name exactly who these children were. Then there was a story about a schoolteacher in Alberta who had been killed by wolves. Since there is no documented case of a human being attacked by an unprovoked wolf in the history of North America, many people did not take this story seriously. But it resonated with Cathy’s husband, who urged her not to go running anymore. Cathy laughed. “Even if the story is true,” she said, “it wouldn’t mean that wolves had a particular taste for schoolteachers.”

  The evidence was mounting in the Fish and Game office in Boise, where the heads of dead wildlife decorated the walls, that the wolf reintroduction may have gotten out of hand and there might be a need for a wolf hunt to control the population. Included in the evidence was a noted decline in deer and elk populations. This could lead to a decline in income for the agency, since they lived off of selling hunting tags. Surely the sale of tags for a wolf hunt would be highly profitable. They decided to hold hearings in Boise.

  * * *

  They hamstring the animal and leave it for dead,” said one rancher. “Sometimes they don’t even eat them. They just like to kill.”

  There were a number of biologists on hand to refute such testimony, but that didn’t stop ranchers and frightened citizenry from spinning their yarns. Annie told the story of the murder of Leopold, despite the fact that there was considerable evidence including snow tracks pointing to a cougar as the culprit.

  Rogers, who represented Sun Valley, said, “One mauling of a skier would destroy the community’s most important industry.”

  Etxegarray smiled with approval.

  It was pointed out that no skier had ever encountered a wolf, and Rogers argued, “Not yet. They are a slow and careful creature. They are up there stalking them, and sooner or later they will make their move.”

  “Not likely,” said Armsby, a handsome brunette in tweed, who was a biologist for Fish and Game. “Wolves avoid human contact, and places like Dollar Mountain and Baldy are so overrun with humans, to a wolf they just reek of human, so that no wolf would want to go there.”

  Allen, a filmmaker from California who wore thousand-dollar hand-tooled cowboy boots, talked of his experiences on his documentary in which he got to know wolves, raised pups, kissed and played with them. He talked of how intelligent, affectionate . . . He was an outsider and nobody really cared what he thought.

  The Reverend Higgins chastised in a gentle demeanor. “I hate to use the word, but this is really blasphemy. God created a kingdom of animals and for us to decide that one animal does not have the right to take its place is like saying that God made a mistake and we know better and will correct his creation.”

  This was followed by silence while the wolf opponents decided how best to respond. Then Etxegarray, a good Catholic who did not have to listen to the Reverend Higgins, stood up and said, “God didn’t put these wolves here. Fish and Wildlife did. And the wolves are a very aggressive foreign strain.”

  “That’s right,” shouted Blaine, a neighboring sheep man. “They’re not ev
en American. They were brought in!”

  This, of course, made Etxegarray uncomfortable, since the same could be and had been said for him. But he continued, “The reintroduction program is a good program, and I support it. But—”

  “But,” interrupted Harwood, another rancher, “we don’t need the federal government coming in here and telling us what kind of wildlife to live with.”

  Such statements were enormously successful at Sheep Association meetings, but Etxegarray did not think they belonged at this hearing, which could very quickly get out of hand, and then an opportunity would be lost. “But we are talking about a large and aggressive strain of a dangerous predator and we are being overwhelmed. How many of you feel safe letting your children play outside?”

  Cathy, the science teacher, spoke. “You say we are overwhelmed, that there are too many wolves.” She was nervous at first and a slight quaver could be detected in her voice, but as she spoke she slipped into her classroom style and felt increasingly comfortable. “But let me ask you something. How many people in this room have ever seen a wolf? Show of hands. Who has seen them?”

  Necks were strained as people looked around the room for raised hands. The long, thin arm of Malcolm was sticking up, and everyone hoped that she wouldn’t call on him.

  But she did. “Malcolm,” she said in her classroom tone.

  “I see them late at night sometimes.”

  This was sad.

  “A whole herd of them galloping through the center of Ketchum, right down Main Street, heading for the East Fork. It’s like they are taking over.”

  Poor Malcolm, everyone thought. He hadn’t been right since his wife ran off with that ski instructor from California.

  * * *

  The Fish and Game Commission authorized a limited wolf hunt throughout the state of Idaho. Many opponents, including Cathy and the Reverend Higgins, predicted a “wholesale slaughter,” but few of the people who took out licenses had ever hunted wolves before. Etxegarray cleaned his rifle and polished it with great affection, and went out for the first six days of the hunt, stalking the slopes where wind whistled in pine needles, the great horned owl whispered its call, and magpies giggled. He saw elk trails and one swift little fox but not a trace of a wolf.