"My God, Ellen, it's the wolf!" Stunned, we stared at the face pressed against the glass, at the blazing yellow eyes and broad cheek ruffs of an adult timber wolf. This wolf was not a stranger to us had first seen him a week before, curled up by a deer carcass in a clearing at the base of our ridge. During the coldest winter months the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources supplies us with road-killed deer for use as wildlife food. We pull the deer remains by toboggan to a clearing two hundred yards below and in full view of our house. It's a place where wild animals can feed and feel secure--a mile from the road, with Superior National Forest all around. Blue jays, gray jays, ravens, foxes, fishers, martens, and weasels feed on the deer carcasses throughout the winter. In spring, to our delight, they are joined by bald eagles and turkey vultures. We find wildlife-watching endlessly entertaining and a great education. Wolves stop here rarely, and we feel lucky to hear them howl or to find their tracks. Although this part of the state is their only stronghold in the nation, outside of Alaska , they are not common even here. Their numbers are stretched thin across thousands of acres of forest. This scarcity and their shy nature mean that a glimpse of a timber wolf is a rare occurrence and that a chance to watch one is a special treat. When I first spotted the wolf at the deer carcass I excitedly watched from the living room window and wrote in my journal as he awoke from his nap, licked his feet, and stood and stretched. |
| A Wolf At The Window By Ellen Hawkins THUMP THUMP THUMP!!! Loud and insistent knocking shocked us out of our sleep. Who would come to our snowbound North Woods cabin in the middle of the night? Gary grabbed the flashlight and hurried into the kitchen. Then, realizing that the sound was not coming from the porch entry, he swung the beam toward the living room's ground-level windows. I caught up just as he froze in his tracks. |
| December 8: "The wolf is finally up, and I can see that he's quite dark, his guard hairs black-tipped gray, with lighter eyebrow spots and cheeks, and reddish fur behind the ears. His tawny legs seem spindly above those great big feet. And he has a radio collar! I didn't know there was anybody studying wolves in this part of the forest. "A wolf does something magic to the place where he is. Here is the same familiar scene, the dark edge of the forest meeting the bright snow of the clearing, the big spruce in the foreground and the vertical lines of the young aspen thicket to the east. But no, the wolf is here and there is a vital focus. The frozen scene is charged with life." But my great excitement at having him here soon became subdued. I wrote: "This is a hurt wolf. He holds up his right front foot and limps. A couple of times he has fallen in soft snow on raven runs between the old deer carcass at the edge of the woods and the fresh carcass in the clearing. His tail is tightly down, except when he's after the ravens, and then it's held out only slightly. "His movements seem stiff and awkward. He's very thin. Standing, facing away from me, his body looks narrower, than his head. And he doesn't seem; enthused about things. He is droopy, indecisive, unhappy. "When he first woke up he did some grooming, but otherwise he's been lying down, either tightly curled or watching those pesky ravens or looking around in a desultory way, ears drooped slightly back. "The ravens are getting braver, and he can hardly stand seeing them at a deer. They come dropping down out of the trees around whichever deer he's not at, and he has to hurry over to get them up. They scatter briefly, but here they come again, settling down around the other deer, and back he has to go." |
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| December l0: "The wolf is still at the deer. In fact, if he ever leaves it, it must be at night. He seems weaker and has long since conceded the older carcass to the ravens. Now his only means of defending the other is to lie on it. Even so, they come sidling closer, stand nonchalantly around for a while, then step up closer yet. The wolf curls his lips as he watches with his head on his paws. Suddenly the ravens scatter in a mad flapping of black wings. The wolf must have snarled. But a minute later the birds are back. "I watched as Gary went crunching down the snowshoe trail, out of sight but not out of hearing of the clearing. As he reached the bottom of the hill, the wolf stood up and watched alertly, ears focused, but a moment later he was relaxed and lying down again." |