OCR Text |
Show PAGE 31 THE ZEPHYR AUGUST 1994 Subject to Change ' ,l11'1 Probably in the same way that you or I would, chained in an alien world. I don't know why Jake has been on my mind, all these years later. Wolves have been in the news lately, with the decision of the Secretary of the Interior to reintroduce them to Yellowstone. Their equally misunderstood cousin, the cougar, has been in the headlines as well. In huge block letters, complete with pictures, a story tells of a 2 year old who was almost grabbed by a cougar in Idaho. On subsequent pages, in tiny print, four different articles tell of the deaths of children at the hands of humans. And I wonder which of these is the dangerous species? Which of these should be chained up or caged in a zoo? And with yet another cougar permit hearing coming up (Aug. Uth in Price. BE THERE!), I wonder why do we feel the need to confine or kill everything we don't understand? Maybe it's that innocence or an indefinable something else we see in them that we don't see in ourselves. Maybe the longing is just too much for us. . Hiking with Ferris along one of her favorite trails, we discover a miniature zoo, a breeding farm I suppose. What it consists of is a group of five or six cages, with three or four wolves in each cage. The cages are small. The wolves can pace maybe four steps, then they are forced to turn around and pace four steps in the' other direction. Ferris stands at the crest of the hill, looking down into their cages. She doesn't bark, just stands and looks. I wonder what she sees. One wolf, a black one, looks up at me with those familiar yellow eyes. Beyond the blankness I see a touch of wildness, a tiny flame that his jailers have not managed to extinguish. , Ferris has bone cancer and will probably not live many more months. This overwhelming sadness is not for Ferris. We will never let her be in pain. The sadness is, of course, for ourselves, who have come to rely on her friendship and love of life. There is not a mile of Moab that we will ever walk without seeing her ears flopping in the distance. Through her simple joy she has given us glimpses of what could be. I make her a promise that before she dies, she will see the wolf cages empty. The promise is whispered to Ferris, but I trust she will tell Jake. - ..-'- , f " - . ' By Cherie Gilmore I once lived across the street from a wolf named Jake. No, I didn't live in a tent in the wilds of Montana.- I lived in a little pink house, in a neighborhood full of similar houses. I think Jake never really felt at home there. It was something about - his yellow eyes. Not the fierceness that Disney wolves' eyes invariably possess. More of a longing, a homesickness. At about the time that Jake the wolf entered my Ufa, a white dog showed up. I was throwing bread out the back door for the birds when I saw her, just sitting in the middle of the lawn, looking very comfortable. She ate the bread. Subsequently she ate my husband's Levis off the clothesline; one perfectly good tennis shoe and a beer can or two. We fed her, truly we did. She just preferred items not traditionally viewed as food. On our explorations of the neighborhood, she seemed reluctant to go near schools. So we named her Ferris. I didn't want a dog (I'm a cat person) and for the first year of her life, I didn't even like Ferris (aside from eating aU his clothes, it was obvious she preferred my husband to me and I think I was offended). But no one answered our ads, and she got along with our cats, so she stayed. Ferris became great friends with Jake. Jake was never allowed off his chain, so Ferris and I visited him on our way to and from our walks. We planned midnight rescue missions and even had a vehicle lined up to transport Jake to a more appropriate home that place I could see in his eyes, where his wild brothers roamed and his spirit lived. There were serious obstacles however. The most obvious were the huge locks on his collar and chain. Then there was the question of how well this "domesticated" wolf could survive in the wild. With the intervening years, I have come to realize that we should have risked it. He would at least have had a fighting chance and if he died, it would have been in freedom. One day a gang of teenagers came by with their pit bull. They ordered the pit bull to attack the wolf. The wolf, in one clean movement, ripped the pit bull's throat open. When I heard about this later, I wished Jake had gone for the throats of the teenagers. They, after all, were the ones who had ruined the pit bull's life and had tried to end Jake's. But animals are so much better. They don't understand revenge. Jake had simply been defending his own life. He was never mean, even to the fool who kept him chained. He played like a puppy with Ferris and loved to be hugged. He was beautiful and deserved better than the few hours of happiness I like to think we gave him. Jake is dead now. I haven't been able to get a clear answer on how he died. - |