Prejudices, misconceptions, they do creep in on one over time. I am certainly no exception. I had read a lot about all animals and thought I had a fair grasp-or at least a realistic

grasp- on most of them. After years of work with the Nevada

Division of Forestry and the Bureau of Land Management I decided to take a job that I thought would be a little less

physically demanding. Old age is no respecter of raw beauty!

  I took a job at the Wilbur D. May Museum in Reno, Nevada. A natural history museum, I felt confident that I knew things about animals and the environment that I could pass on to school groups and what I didn’t know I could research without too much effort or trouble. After all, I figured, I was going to be dealing primarily with kids. How tough could that be? Lunch sack in hand, I trundled off…to one of the most amazingly educational and rewarding encounters of my life! Wolves! Specifically, Atalla – The Wonder Wolf! Apprehensively, I

approached Atalla’s enclosure for the first time, a thousand

little voices running through my head. I recalled all the things I’d read about gray wolves, things I’d seen in film and even the old myths and legends came to mind of werewolves and lycanthropy.

  This big North American Gray Wolf certainly didn’t need a storyboard to explain this toothy creature with the unyielding gaze was no overgrown chicken thief! The “real thing” surpassed my previously smug academic knowledge of Canis

lupus so much that I shrank inside like an ice cube dropped

on a hot griddle! That first meeting touched something very primeval in me – namely Fear!! In spite of all Atalla’s owner/trainer’s reassurances my overactive imagination kept

flashing red letter warnings! Wolves were ruthless! Wolves

were blood-thirsty! Wolves were never truly tame and can turn on you in an instant! Mace Loftus tried to explain that Atalla was very comfortable and reliable in public but I had already made up my mind. Of course he would say that about his animal. It was his after all! I didn’t want to risk a chunk of me to prove him wrong! "Not Me!" I'd tell Atalla mentally every time I passed her enclosure. "You aren't getting a piece of this old girl even with a lucky shot!"

  I have always considered myself to be a level headed

person. Raised in southern Arizona in a farming/ranching

family, I grew up with a profusion of animal associates

– some good and some a colossal pain in the …uh…

rump roast. It was a constant vigil against “varmints”, in

one shape or another, to keep them away from making off with livestock that were our bread and butter. Predators were definitely expendable but in the rural agricultural way of life the ranch stock was not. Every cow counted. Every horse was a business partner. Every chicken was breakfast on the table or Sunday supper.

Nothing better mess with any of them or winter was likely to be leaner than it had to be and forget that new pair of boots you had your heart set on.The old, scuffed, and ugly pair would be re-soled – again- and we had to make do. I learned “critters” because I had to.

  They were the center of my universe then and I learned to look for “sign” of their presence – indications that some opportunist might be lurking about to snatch a calf, a lamb, or even my pet hen, Charlotte, when my guard was down. Heaven forbid that anything should have ever gotten Charlotte! She always laid double yoked eggs!

  Then, inevitably, I grew up and decided there had to be more to life then following the dirty behinds of range cattle and being outsmarted , from time to time, by coyotes, bobcats, mountain lions, and the occasional foul tempered badger. I joined the Navy, got “citie-fied”, went to the university, and began kicking around in varied fields of conservation and natural resources.

  I’ve read about wolves. I’ve actually read quite a lot about them but my only real experience with them in those early years was with the Navy. There I had to learn the elusive tactics of how to avoid the Great American Bellbottomed Sea Wolf- a dangerous creature but not usually lethal when not hunting with a pack! The four legged kind were something of an abstract thought to me; more of "what if" rather than a "what is".