These are the real reasons I go to Wildlife Safari, Canis lupus, the grey wolf, the progenitor for all our dog species, Canis lupus familiaris. Handsome, very wary, ferociously intelligent, and fiercely physical, the wolf has been one of mankind's favorite villains, even more than his smaller brothers, the slyly cunning coyote and fox. (The family also includes jackals and various wild dogs, such as the Australian dingoes or Asian dholes.) From "Little Red Riding Hood" to Lon Chaney's 1941 The Wolf Man and all subsequent werewolf movies like The Howling series or even Charmed TV episodes, we've persecuted unfairly the animal Farly Mowat discovered in the quasi-documentary, the 1981 Oscar-nominated Never Cry Wolf, to the extent--against ranchers' protests--that we have re-introduced these valuable animals in wilderness areas. I give short shrift to horror movies, generally finding them inexcusably perpetuating false stereotypes, superstitions, and ugly violence; but one I've watched at least 15 times is the award-winning 1981 Wolfen, with its fascinating photographic technique--for its time--of making the spectator one of the infrared or heat-seeing predators of the title, starring Albert Finney as a New York detective, with Edward James Olmos as a Native American shapeshifter and some of the most beautiful wolves I've ever seen.
Anyway, having always had dogs growing up, I also have lots of wolf paraphernalia given to me by the family over the years, always have at least one wolf calendar, and, of course, own several books about wolves.
Wolf Canyon is really just a small ravine, with the steepest side to the east covered with trees and shrubbery. One of the few areas where people are allowed out of their cars to walk to, the first-front enclosure is for black bears with a wolf or two, but the day I was there, the bears were in at the Doorly Zoo having their physicals. Since last year a new boardwalk viewing platform has been installed over the juncture of the bears' pen and the wolf pack's area. Last year there were 13 wolves, but I heard a ranger docent tell a group of schoolchildren that some of the wolves had died. If one walks north around the end of the wolf ravine and back along the steep hillside, he has more proximity to the wolves, as illustrated in these three smaller photos. Clanging from the feeding-time process and a noisy crowd had three wolves nervously loping in a loop (a bad pun: the French loup, pronounced loo, means "wolf"), passing me every five or ten minutes in their circuit. This is the area where, earlier in the summer, parental stupidity allowed a four-year-old to go past the wooden barrier and stick his fingers through the wire mesh, but the "nice doggy" was a wild animal and bit some off. Gee, what a surprise.
Later, on the new viewing deck, I had no fence between us, catching one coming down the western side and standing on the large rock.
While still on the viewing platform, I looked back up the hillside to the east, where I had been so close, and caught the one below checking me out.
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