The Man Who Lives with Wolves. Shaun Ellis

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СКАЧАТЬ six-foot-high link wire with a double gate to prevent a wolf accidentally escaping when the keepers came and went. Although the area was small, it was quite heavily wooded, and there was a bank toward the back under the shade of the densest trees where the wolves had dug an underground den. Otherwise there was a low rectangular hut by the gate that looked like an air-raid shelter and another smaller structure with a flat roof that the wolves seemed to enjoy lying on during the day. The keepers took carcasses to the animals every few days. Otherwise, their only human contact was when one of the animals needed veterinary attention. The keepers certainly didn’t make a habit of being on the wrong side of the wire for any length of time and no one ever went near the wolves at night. The park closed before dusk and the keepers all went off duty.

      It was common practice for everyone going into the enclosure to be armed with a broom handle. It was routine with all of the big predators in case anything went wrong, but the wolves were never threatening. On the contrary, they seemed to feel threatened by us. They panicked when anyone went near them; they tore off to the far end of the enclosure or disappeared underground and only came to their food when we were well away. These didn’t look to me like vicious creatures that would attack as soon as look at you.

      Curiosity soon got the better of me. I wanted to get close to those animals and to know more about them and so I started sitting quietly inside the enclosure. I sat there for hour after hour, for several weeks, hoping that the wolves might start to take an interest, as the foxes had done, and come and investigate me. They didn’t. Then I realized what I was doing wrong. I was invading their territory in daylight, when I felt comfortable. What would happen, I wondered, if I switched the odds and approached them, as I had the foxes, at night when they had the upper hand? Might I then get a truer understanding of what those creatures were really about? I applied the psychology I had learned in the army in reverse. I wanted the wolves to feel that they had the advantage and I did not. My colleagues had been astonished by my desire to sit in the enclosure during the day and when I told them that I wanted to go in at night, they thought I was certifiable. But to his credit, Ellis Daw, the owner, whom I had come to know quite well by then, let me experiment.

      Even now I have no idea what I wanted from those wolves or why I felt so compelled to get to know them in that way. Maybe it was a voyage of self-discovery, to lay the ghosts of my childhood to rest. Maybe it was because they reminded me of the dogs I had grown up with and I was hoping that I would find some of the comfort and security with the wolves that I had felt with the dogs—and not experienced fully since my grandfather died. Or maybe I was just plain nuts. What I do know is that it upset me that those beautiful creatures found contact with humans so stressful, and I hoped that if they got to know me, I might in some way be able to make their lives in captivity a little better.

      One night, when there was a new moon in the sky, I put on an old tracksuit and, taking my courage in both hands, went into the enclosure and locked the doors behind me. I was terrified, absolutely terrified; to the best of my knowledge, no one had ever done this before—and there had been plenty of accidents with captive wolves. There was no way of knowing how these wolves might react, whether they would hide away or tear me to pieces. But I had to know. Enveloped by darkness and stumbling over fallen branches and protruding tree roots, I made my way to the bank at the top and sat down to wait for I wasn’t sure what. It was hard to see and the night was full of strange noises as the nocturnal animals in the park limbered up. But I soon began to relax. The wolves remained hidden in the shadows and gave me no cause for concern. I began to feel comforted by the darkness. As a child I had loved the dark and the noises of the forest; they had made me feel safe as I lay in my bed under the coarse black blanket in Norfolk, and they began to make me feel safe here, too.

      Every night for a week and a half I went into the enclosure. I wore the same clothes, knowing the importance of scent from my experience of the wild, although I didn’t know at that time that diet was also important. I was eating normal human food, but as I learned more, I discovered that I had to change. For the first three nights I sat in the same spot; although the wolves kept their distance, I could see that they were beginning to be a little curious. The next night I got up and moved to another part of the enclosure during the night. They immediately scattered, as though frightened, but I could see that a couple of the wolves went over to where I had been sitting to investigate my smell and to urinate, or scent, over it. They then resettled a safe distance away, but I was aware that they were watching me. That went on for a few more nights. They were interested but they just didn’t have the courage to come up and face me.

      The next night one of the wolves, Reuben, which I now know to have been the beta animal, walked boldly up to me and started to sniff me all over and sniff the air. He didn’t touch—he was just checking me out; and he did this for a couple of nights. The next night I was sitting up on the bank at the highest point in the enclosure with my legs out in front of me, knees in the air. The same wolf came over to me and did exactly what he had done the previous two nights: sniffed me, sniffed the air, sniffed down my legs, and then suddenly without warning he lunged forward and in a split second his incisors had taken a hard, very painful nip out of the fleshy bit of my knee.

      I sat frozen to the spot. I didn’t know what to do. If I got up and ran, would he run after me with the pack and bring me down? If I lashed out at him, would I make him more aggressive? So out of sheer ignorance, I sat there thinking, Christ, this is it, game over.

      But he backed off, and stood looking at me quizzically as if gauging my reaction. Then he turned and disappeared into the darkness and I didn’t see him again until the following night, when he came and did exactly the same thing. He repeated the behavior every night for about two weeks, by which time my knees were black-and-blue. He might bite a different knee or nip my shin, but it was always the same procedure; he would come close, sniff, then lash out and disappear into the night. Sometimes he did it two or three times a night.

      I had no idea what he was doing, but I knew that he couldn’t have meant me any real harm because he never followed it up with any sign of aggression and he never called over another wolf to join him—and with jaws that are capable of exerting fifteen hundred pounds of pressure per square inch, he could have had my kneecap off in seconds. But he chose not to and that’s what kept me going back for more. All I had to show for his assaults were thin lines of bruising on my knees and legs, like little wolf love bites. I didn’t react on any of those occasions, which I later discovered is what saved me.

      The first thing a wolf will do, I came to realize, is find out whether a newcomer is trustworthy; the way he does that is by seeing how the stranger reacts to a bite. The incoming wolf immediately exposes his vulnerable throat area to signify that he has come in peace and the established wolf will dominate him until he is satisfied there is no threat. If I had pulled away or screamed, it could have been all over very quickly.

      After two weeks of nips, Reuben started rolling his scent over me. He started with my feet, rubbing them with the side of his face, his teeth, the back of his ears, his hackles, and his tail. He then did the same to my legs, never biting, just rolling on me. If I got up and moved during this process, he’d nip me, back off, and if I didn’t react—which I didn’t—he’d come and start rolling on me again. What he was doing, I realized, was testing me. That is the beta’s role in the pack: to protect the others and to act like a bouncer at the door, making sure that no undesirable or threatening individual gets through. I must have satisfied him that I was acceptable because after four or five weeks he started bringing other members of the pack over.

      This was the process that happens in the wild when a lone wolf attempts to join an established pack, as I later discovered. The ones that came to meet me were all high ranking and they didn’t touch me initially; they just stood behind Reuben and watched and sniffed, as he moved slowly around my body, nipping. He nipped the back of my head, not quite as roughly as he’d bitten other parts, but enough to produce blood spots that turned into scabs. Once or twice I tried moving back to try to rub against him, but any movement, whether subtle or sudden, got me another nip. He was biting me to keep me in place—and СКАЧАТЬ