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Friday, October 23, 2009

ON THE ROAD TO THE WOLF PARTY

Steve Cole reports:

By the middle of this morning, Leanna and I will have left for the Halloween party at the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary southwest of Grants, New Mexico. This is an annual trip.

Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary provides a home for wolves that were bought as pets by people who (sooner or later) figured out that wolves don't make good pets. (A few were taken in from a small public zoo that closed down.) The wolves (timber and arctic) live out their lives in comfort and dignity, with a proper diet and good medical care. (These wolves have never been "in the wild" and could not survive there.) The wolves are kept in large pens, with two or three wolves per pen so they keep each other company. You can find out more about the sanctuary at the website: www.wildspiritwolfsanctuary.org and from my various blog reports. The Sanctuary is supported entirely by donations, and by those who pay for tours. ADB, Inc., makes annual donations to Wild Spirit, and of course, we make one or two trips a year over there.

People keeping wild animals (tigers are the biggest crisis, but wolves are a close second) is an epidemic in this country. (There are more tigers in Texas than in Asia.) It's legal to breed and sell these animals in most states, and it's legal to own them in most states. For whatever stupid reason, people who live in areas where it's not legal do it anyway. Somehow, it sounds "cool" to own a tiger, or a wolf, or a cougar, or some other wild animal. Some people own them as pets; others exploit the animals for profit as roadside attractions. Many of these animals are kept in deplorable conditions. Owners find out just how expensive it is to keep these animals and quickly lose interest in treating them properly. Those wolf-owners who have a soul call Wild Spirit and arrange to send the wolves there and make a donation to cover their care.

Perhaps it is human vanity or silliness, but someone decided that Halloween is the national holiday for wolves. Wild Spirit throws a party every year. A hundred or more people drive in to take tours and watch the annual pumpkin toss. It becomes a major event for wild animals of all types. Many people bring other wild animals that they keep (in a licensed, responsible way) for public education. There are always numerous birds of prey, and no end of educational seminars and presentations. Last year, the local Native American tribe (Ramah Navajo) put on a presentation of their heritage and culture.

The pumpkins are a key part of the festival. Children carve faces in the pumpkins during the day, and then in the afternoon, the pumpkins are filled with meat and each wolf is given one as a present (for the wolf holiday). The wolves who have been at Wild Spirit for more than a year know what to do with the pumpkins (they recognized "pumpkin day" easily enough, but the new arrivals are perplexed and have to figure it out. This is part of the "enrichment program" which keeps the wolves active, alert, and from getting bored. (The sanctuary does a party for Easter with baskets of meat.)

Wild Spirit is unique in my experience in that they allow people (with prior counseling) to bring food into the sanctuary and feed it to the wolves. Last year, I took over a hundred pounds of raw meat for the wolves; this year, I am taking over three hundred pounds. What does the healthy wolf eat for the national holiday? Well, you might think that the answer is sirloin steak, but what the wolves want and crave (and what I take them) is "organ meat": beef heart, liver, and kidneys. This is all good meat (better for you than sirloin), even if Americans won't eat it very much or at all. (I buy this stuff from a butcher who slaughters his own cattle, but I have to special order it weeks in advance. He saves up the organs from two weeks of slaughter, just for my wolves. Anybody can order heart, liver, or kidney, but few people do. Heart and liver are $1.50 per pound, and kidney is only 50 cents a pound, a fraction of the cost of sirloin, or even chuck roast. Most of this organ meat is sold to a dogfood factory.)

Wolves prefer organ meat, prizing it as delicacy and a special treat. It has more nutrition, vitamins, minerals, and other good things than steak and roast. A wolf pack that brings down a deer or a buffalo has a "social order". The Alpha Male (and his mate) get the heart and liver, and the other biggest and strongest wolves get the kidneys. The other wolves have to get by on sirloin, rump roast, ribs, and so forth. Give a wolf a pound of heart and a pound of sirloin, and he will eat the heart first (but he will eat both). Dogs may have gotten their start from wolves who hung around the garbage dumps near cave man villages, but garbage is not good for wolves.

I started going to Wild Spirit several years ago when Mike Sparks, our customer service guy, showed us a brochure for the place. Leanna and I love animals, particularly (well, almost entirely) predators. On the first trip, I remarked that it was a pity I could not bring food. I was surprised when I was told it was ok. (They gave me a detailed explanation of what to bring. No pork. No fat.) On my next trip, I brought three beef hearts. One went to Genghis Khan, the Alpha Wolf, and one to his lady, Artemsia. (Being a soldier, I have an admiration for old Genghis.) The third heart went to Doc, a wolf who was not having a good time and needed something special to brighten his day. I have taken beef heart to Genghis twice now; tomorrow will be the third time. The second time, he didn't eat it at first, but carried it to the highest point in his pen to show it off. Then he ate it. Wolves have such a keen sense of smell that when I arrive at the sanctuary, Genghis recognizes me from two hundred yards away and goes a little crazy waiting for me to trudge up the hill with his special tribute. Being the Alpha Wolf, he darn well better get the most and best of what I bring.

Wild Spirit feeds the wolves a variety of food approved by the US government. (They are regulated like a zoo.) Naturally, cost is an issue, and the wolves (who eat a few pounds of meat every day) get various items including purchased and donated meat. (There are many hunters in the region who donate the unwanted parts of the deer and elk they kill. Taxidermists send in loads of bones and meat.) Often, the wolves get chicken, because dark meat is cheap to buy, and they often get a thing called "wolf loaf". Wolf loaf is a mixture of ground beef, ground turkey, eggs, vitamins, and other things. It's a way to make sure they get a balanced diet.

The pumpkins have always had just the normal day's ration of something, usually wolf loaf with maybe a piece of chicken. That is, they got that until I showed up. Now, they get the Las Vegas Buffet of wolf food: a chunk of heart, half a kidney, a slice of liver, several pieces of chicken, and of course, a double handful of wolf loaf. I was much amused last year to watch the wolves open their pumpkins and sort through the buffet. Each wolf would pick out his favorite item to eat first. Some of them would go through the whole pumpkin to see if there was any more of that favorite thing before eating the rest. There were two wolves which actually traded treats; each ate what they wanted and then at their pen mate's leftovers! Genghis, who had finished a four-pound heart only two hours earlier, not only ate his entire pumpkin's contents, but stole the buffet pumpkin from Artemesia! (She didn't seem to care; her tummy was full of four pounds of beef heart. The poor girl has to eat her heart as fast as she can to avoid having Genghis steal it from her. She has a Bad Boy Complex that would put the average motorcycle mama to shame. When she says "my mate can beat up your mate!" she isn't kidding.)