Some years ago, a couple of
biologists living in the northern wilds rescued a wolf cub. For the next decade
and a half, the man and woman devoted themselves to giving the wolf, a female,
the best, most wolfish life possible, and to documenting it.
If, like me, you have
entertained fantasies of what it would be like to have a wolf of your own, the
documentary that the couple made would nip them in the bud. The inside of their
cabin looked like a war zone. Cushions were ripped out and strewn everywhere.
The rustic furniture had been chewed to pieces. There were holes in the floor
where the wolf had dug. It’s not that
she was in the least aggressive; she was simply…active.
Winter and summer, every
single day, the couple hiked endless miles to satisfy their protégée’s
compulsion to roam. Whenever they weren’t trudging up and down mountains, they
were scavenging for road kill and other sources of meat for the wolf, who
flourished under their care. The couple, however, looked more haggard and worn
with each passing year.
When the wolf grew old and
died, they didn’t bury her. Instead, they carried her body to the top of a
nearby hill and laid her on the ground, the way a wild wolf’s remains would
have been left. Then they set up a camera nearby and made a stop-action video
of the ensuing months.
In late summer and into the
fall, as flies and beetles crawled over it, the wolf’s body seemed to flatten and sink slowly into the ground. Scavengers made off with a few bits and
pieces, and then the snow came and covered everything.
In the spring, after the snow
melted, the carcass had disappeared, and in its place there grew a thick, bright
green patch of young grass, in the shape of a wolf.
