Never Cry Wolf (11 page)

 

20

The Worm i' the Bud

I
QUERIED
Ootek about the apparently inexplicable behavior of the band of wolves I had seen at the Eskimo camp, and in his patient and kindly fashion he once more endeavored to put me straight.

To begin with, he told me that a healthy adult caribou can outrun a wolf with ease, and even a three-week-old fawn can outrun all but the swiftest wolf. The caribou were perfectly well aware of this, and therefore knew they had little to fear from wolves in the normal course of events. The wolves were fully aware of it too, and, being highly intelligent, they seldom even attempted to run down a healthy caribou—knowing full well that this would be a senseless waste of effort.

What the wolves did instead, according to Ootek, was to adopt a technique of systematically testing the state of health and general condition of the deer in an effort to find one which was not up to par. When caribou were abundant this testing was accomplished by rushing each band and putting it to flight for just long enough to expose the presence, or absence, of a sick, wounded or otherwise inferior beast. If such a one was revealed, the wolves closed on it and attempted to make a kill. If there was no such beast in the herd, the wolves soon desisted from the chase and went off to test another group.

When caribou were hard to find, different techniques were used. Several wolves acting in concert would sometimes drive a small herd of deer into an ambush where other wolves were waiting; or if caribou were very scarce, the wolves might use a relay system whereby one wolf would drive the deer towards another wolf posted some distance away, who would then take up the chase in his turn. Techniques such as these decreased the caribou's natural advantages, of course, but it was usually still the weakest or at any rate the least able deer which fell victim to the pursuing wolves.

“It is as I told you,” Ootek said. “The caribou feeds the wolf, but it is the wolf who keeps the caribou
strong. We know that if it were not for the wolf there would soon be no caribou at all, for they would die as weakness spread among them.”

Ootek also stressed the fact that, once a kill had been made, the wolves did no more hunting until the supply of food was completely gone and they were forced by hunger to go back to work.

These were novel concepts to one who had been taught to believe that wolves were not only capable of catching almost anything but, actuated by an insatiable blood lust, would slaughter everything which came within their range.

Of the hunts I subsequently watched, almost all followed the pattern of the first one I had seen. The hunters, numbering from one to as many as eight individual wolves, would be observed trotting unhurriedly through the dispersed groups of deer, who almost invariably seemed quite unconcerned by the presence of their “mortal enemies.” Every now and again a wolf, or sometimes two or three, would turn aside from the line of march and make a short dash at some nearby deer, who would wait until the attackers were about a hundred yards distant before throwing up their heads and galloping off disdainfully. The wolves would stop and watch the deer
go. If they ran well and were obviously in good fettle, the wolves would then turn away.

The testing was not haphazard and I began to see a pattern of selection emerging. It was very seldom indeed that wolves bothered testing the herds of prime bucks, who were then at the peak of condition, having done nothing all summer but eat and sleep. It was not that these bucks were dangerous adversaries (their great spreads of antlers are useless as weapons) but simply that the wolves did not stand a chance of closing with them, and they knew it.

Mixed herds of does with fawns were much more interesting to the wolves, for the percentage of injured, malformed or inferior individuals is naturally higher among the fawns, who have not yet been subjected to any prolonged period of rigorous natural selection.

Groups of aged and sterile does were also a favorite target for testing. Sometimes one of these old and weakened beasts would be concealed in the midst of a herd of prime and vigorous animals; but the wolves, who must have known the caribou almost as intimately as they knew themselves, would invariably spot such a beast and test what looked
to my eyes like a hopelessly healthy and active herd.

Fawns were often tested more severely than adults, and a wolf might chase a fawn for two or three hundred yards; but unless the young animal had given signs of weakness or exhaustion within that distance, the chase was usually abandoned.

Economy of effort seemed to be a guiding principle with the wolves—and an eminently sensible one too, for the testing process often had to be continued for many hours before the wolves encountered a caribou sufficiently infirm to be captured.

When the testing finally produced such a beast, the hunt would take a new turn. The attacking wolf would recklessly expend the energy he had been conserving during the long search, and would go for his prey in a glorious surge of speed and power which, if he was lucky, would bring him close behind the fleeing deer. Panic-stricken at last, the deer would begin frantically zigzagging—a foolish thing to do, I thought, since this enabled the wolf to take short cuts and close the gap more quickly.

Contrary to one more tenet of the wolf myth, I never saw a wolf attempt to hamstring a deer. Drawing upon all his strength, the wolf would forge up alongside the caribou and leap for its shoulder. The impact was usually enough to send the deer off bal
ance and, before it could recover, the wolf would seize it by the back of the neck and bring it down, taking care to avoid the wildly thrashing hoofs, a blow from any one of which could cave in the wolfs rib-cage like so much brittle candy.

The kill was quickly, and usually cleanly, made and I doubt very much if the deer suffered any more than a hog suffers when it is being butchered for human consumption.

The wolf never kills for fun, which is probably one of the main differences distinguishing him from man. It is hard work for a wolf to catch and kill a big game animal. He may hunt all night and cover fifty or sixty miles of country before he is successful—if he
is
successful even then. This is his business, his job, and once he has obtained enough meat for his own and his family's needs he prefers to spend the rest of his time resting, being sociable, or playing.

Contrary to yet another misconception, I know of no valid evidence that wolves kill more than they can use, even when the rare opportunity to do so arises. A kill made during the denning season is revisited time and again until the last ounce of meat has been stripped from it. Often—if gulls, ravens, foxes and other scavengers are numerous—the wolf will dismember the carcass and bury sections of it
at considerable distances from the site of the kill in order to preserve it for his own use. Later in the season, when the united family is freely roaming its territory, the band will camp near each kill until it is completely consumed.

Of sixty-seven wolf-killed caribou which I examined after the wolves were finished with them, few consisted of anything except bones, ligaments, hair and offal. In most cases even the long-bones had been cracked for the marrow content; and in some cases the skull had been gnawed open—a formidable task even for a wolf.

Another point of interest is that what little remained of most of these carcasses showed evidence of disease or serious debility. Bone deformations, particularly those caused by necrosis of the skull, were common; and the worn state of the teeth of many skulls showed that these belonged to old and enfeebled animals. Fresh kills, where the whole carcass was available for examination, were hard to come by; but on a number of occasions I reached a deer almost as soon as the wolves had killed it and, with inexcusable gall, shooed the wolves away. They went timidly enough, albeit unhappily. Several of these deer were so heavily infested with external and
internal parasites that they were little better than walking menageries, doomed to die soon in any case.

 

As the weeks wore on toward the summer's end, the validity of Ootek's thesis become more and more obvious. The vital importance played by the wolf in preserving rather than in destroying the caribou seemed irrefutable to me, although I was by no means sure it would appear in the same light to my employers. I needed overwhelming proof if I was to convince them, and preferably proof of a solidly material nature.

With this in mind, I began making collections of the parasites found in wolf-killed caribou. As usual, Ootek took a keen interest in this new aspect of my work; but it was a short-lived interest.

Through all of recorded time his people had been caribou eaters, living largely on raw or only partly cooked meat, because of the shortage of fuel for fires. Ootek himself was weaned on caribou meat, pre-chewed for him by his mother, and it had been his staple food ever since he gave up mother's milk. Consequently he took his meat for granted, and it had never occurred to him to turn an analytical eye upon his daily bread. When he saw me producing
scores of varieties and thousands of individual worms and cysts from various parts of caribou anatomy, he was greatly surprised.

One morning he was watching in somber fascination as I dissected a particularly pest-ridden old buck. I always tried to explain what I was doing so that he would understand the nature of my studies, and this seemed to be as good a time as any to brief him on the subject of parasitization. Hauling a bladder cyst about the size of a golfball out of the caribou's liver, I explained that this was the inactive form of a tapeworm, and that, if eaten by a carnivore, it would eventually develop into several segmented creatures about thirty feet in length, coiled neatly in the new host's intestines.

Ootek looked sick.

“You mean when it is eaten by a wolf?” he asked hopefully.

“
Nahk
,” I replied, exercising my growing Eskimo vocabulary. “Foxes, wolves, even people will do. It will grow in any of them, though perhaps not as well in people.”

Ootek shuddered and began to scratch his stomach as if conscious of an itching sensation in that region.

“I do not like liver, fortunately,” he said, greatly relieved now that he had remembered this fact.

“Oh, these worms are found all through the caribou,” I explained, with the enthusiasm of an expert enlightening a layman. “Look here. See these spots in the rump meat? White men call this ‘measled meat.' These are the resting forms of another kind of worm. I do not know for sure if it will grow in people. But these—” and here I deftly extracted some threadlike nematode worms, each ten or more inches in length, from the dissected lungs— “these have been found in men: in fact enough of them will choke a man to death in a very little while.”

Ootek coughed convulsively and his mahogany-dark face grew wan again.

“That is enough,” he pleaded when he had got his breath back. “Tell me no more! I go now, back to the camp, and there I will think hard of many things and I will forget what you have told me. You are not kind. For if these things be true, then surely I will have to eat fish like an otter, or else starve to death. But perhaps this is a white man's joke?”

There was such a pathetic note of hope in his question that it roused me from my professor's trance and I belatedly realized what I was doing to the man.

I laughed, if in a somewhat artificial manner.

“
Eema
, Ootek. It is a joke on you. Only a joke. Now go you back to camp and cook our supper of big steaks. Only,” and in spite of myself I could not restrain the adjuration, “make damn' sure you cook them well!”

 

21

School Days

B
Y MID
-S
EPTEMBER
the tundra plains burned somberly in the subdued glow of russet and umber where the early frosts had touched the ground cover of low shrubbery. The muskeg pastures about Wolf House Bay were fretted with fresh roads made by the southbound herds of caribou, and the pattern of the wolves' lives had changed again.

The pups had left the summer den and, though they could not keep up with Angeline and the two males on prolonged hunts, they could and did go along on shorter expeditions. They had begun to explore their world, and those autumnal months must have been among the happiest of their lives.

When Ootek and I returned to Wolf House Bay
after our travels through the central plains, we found that our wolf family was ranging widely through its territory and spending the days wherever the hunt might take it.

Within the limits imposed upon me by my physical abilities and human needs, I tried to share that wandering life, and I too enjoyed it immensely. The flies were all gone. Though there were sometimes frosts at night, the days were usually warm under a clear sun.

 

On one such warm and sunlit day I made my way north from the den esker, along the crest of a range of hills which overlooked a great valley, rich in forage, and much used by the caribou as a highway south.

A soot-flecking of black specks hung in the pallid sky above the valley—flocks of ravens following the deer herds. Families of ptarmigan cackled at me from clumps of dwarf shrub. Flocks of Old Squaw ducks, almost ready to be off for distant places, swirled in the tundra ponds.

Below me in the valley rolled a sluggish stream of caribou, herd after herd grazing toward the south, unconscious, yet directly driven by a knowledge that was old before we ever knew what knowledge was.

Some miles from the den esker I found a niche at the top of a high cliff overlooking the valley, and here I settled myself in comfort, my back against the rough but sun-warmed rock, my knees drawn up under my chin, and my binoculars leveled at the living stream below me.

I was hoping to see the wolves and they did not disappoint me. Shortly before noon two of them came into sight on the crest of a transverse ridge some distance to the north. A few moments later two more adults and the four pups appeared. There was some frisking, much nose smelling and tail wagging, and then most of the wolves lay down and took their ease, while the others sat idly watching the caribou streaming by on either side only a few hundred feet away.

I easily recognized Angeline and George. One of the other two adults looked like Uncle Albert; but the fourth, a rangy dark-gray beast, was a total stranger to me. I never did learn who he was or where he came from, but for the rest of the time I was in the country he remained a member of the band.

Of all the wolves, indeed of all the animals in view including the caribou and myself, only George seemed to feel any desire to be active. While the
rest of us sprawled blissfully in the sun, or grazed lethargically amongst the lichens, George began to wander restlessly back and forth along the top of the ridge. Once or twice he stopped in front of Angeline but she paid him no attention other than to flop her tail lazily a few times.

Drowsily I watched a doe caribou grazing her way up the ridge on which the wolves were resting. She had evidently found a rich patch of lichens and, though she must have seen the wolves, she continued to graze toward them until not twenty yards separated her from one of the pups. This pup watched her carefully until, to my delight, he got to his feet, stared uneasily over his shoulder to see what the rest of the family was doing, then turned and slunk toward them with his tail actually between his legs.

Not even the restless George, who now came slowly toward the doe, his nose outthrust as he tasted her scent, seemed to disturb her equanimity until the big male wolf, perhaps hurt in his dignity by her unconcern, made a quick feint in her direction. At that she flung her head high, spun on her ungainly legs and gallumphed back down the ridge apparently more indignant than afraid.

Time slipped past, the river of deer continued to
flow, and I expected to observe nothing more exciting than this brief interlude between the doe and the wolves, for I guessed that the wolves had already fed, and that this was the usual after-dinner siesta. I was wrong, for George had something on his mind.

A third time he went over to Angeline, who was now stretched out on her side, and this time he would not take “no” for an answer. I have no idea what he said, but it must have been pertinent, for she scrambled to her feet, shook herself, and bounced amiably after him as he went to sniff at the slumbering forms of Uncle Albert and the Stranger. They too got the message and rose to their feet. The pups, never slow to join in something new, also roused and galloped over to join their elders. Standing in a rough circle, the whole group of wolves now raised their muzzles and began to howl, exactly as they used to do at the den esker before starting on a hunt.

I was surprised that they should be preparing for a hunt so early in the day, but I was more surprised by the lack of reaction to the wolf chorus on the part of the caribou. Hardly a deer within hearing even bothered to lift its head, and those few who did contented themselves with a brief, incurious look toward the ridge before returning to their placid grazing. I had no time to ponder the matter, for Angeline, Al
bert and the Stranger now started off, leaving the pups sitting disconsolately in a row on the crest, with George standing just ahead of them. When one of the youngsters made an attempt to follow the three adults, George turned on him, and the pup hurriedly rejoined his brothers and sisters.

What little wind there was blew from the south and the three wolves moved off upwind in a tight little group. As they reached the level tundra they broke into a trot, following one another in line, not hurrying, but trotting easily through the groups of caribou. As usual the deer were not alarmed and none took evasive action except when the wolves happened to be on a collision course with them.

The three wolves paid no attention to the caribou either, although they passed many small herds containing numbers of fawns. They made no test runs at any of these groups, but continued purposefully on their way until they were almost abreast the niche where I was sitting. At this point Angeline stopped and sat down while the other two joined her. There was more nose smelling, then Angeline got up and turned toward the ridge where George and the pups still sat.

There were at least two hundred deer between the
two groups of wolves, and more were coming constantly into view around the eastern shoulder of the transverse ridge. Angeline's glance seemed to take them all in before she and her companions began to move off. Spreading out to form a line abreast, with intervals of a couple of hundred yards between them so that they almost spanned the whole width of the valley, they now began to run north.

They were not running hard, but there was a new purposefulness to their movements which the deer seemed to recognize; or perhaps it was just that the formation the wolves were using made it difficult for the herds to avoid them in the usual way by running off to one side. In any event herd after herd also began to turn about and move north, until most of the caribou in the valley were being driven back the way they had come.

The deer were clearly reluctant to be driven, and several herds made determined efforts to buck the line; but on each occasion the two nearest wolves converged toward the recalcitrant caribou and forced them to continue north. However, three wolves could not sweep the whole width of the valley; the deer soon began to discover that they could swing around the open wings and so resume
their southerly progress. Nevertheless, by the time the wolves were nearing the ridge, they were herding at least a hundred deer ahead of them.

Now for the first time the deer showed real signs of nervousness. What had become an almost solid mass of a hundred or more animals broke up into its constituent small bands again, and each went galloping off on its own course. Group after group began to swerve aside, but the wolves no longer attempted to prevent them. As the wolves galloped past each of these small herds, the caribou stopped and turned to watch for a moment before resuming their interrupted journey south.

I was beginning to see what the wolves were up to. They were now concentrating their efforts on one band of a dozen does and seven fawns, and every attempt which this little herd made to turn either left or right was promptly foiled. The deer gave up after a while, and settled down to outrun their pursuers in the straightaway.

They would have done it, too, but as they swept past the clump of willows at the end of the ridge a perfect flood of wolves seemed to take them in the flank.

I could not follow events as well as I would have wished because of the distance, but I saw George
racing toward a doe accompanied by two fawns, then, just as he reached them, I saw him swerve away. He was passed by two pups going like gray bullets. These two went for the nearest of the two fawns, which promptly began jinking. One of the pups, attempting too sharp a turn, missed his footing and tumbled head over heels, but he was up on the instant and away again.

The other pups seemed to have become intermingled with the balance of the deer, and I could not see what they were up to; but as the herd drew away at full gallop the pups appeared in the rear, running hard, but losing ground.

A single fawn now began outdistancing its pursuers too. All four pups were still running flat out, although they no longer had a chance of overtaking any of the deer.

What of the adult wolves meanwhile? When I swung my glasses back to look for them I found George standing exactly where I had seen him last, his tail wagging slowly as he watched the progress of the chase. The other three wolves had by now returned to the crest of the ridge. Albert and the Stranger had lain down to rest, after their brief exertions, but Angeline was standing up and watching the rapidly retreating caribou.

It was half an hour before the pups came back. They were so weary they could hardly climb the ridge to join their elders, all of whom were now lying down relaxing. The pups joined the group and flopped, panting heavily; but none of the adults paid them any heed.

School was over for the day.