Wolf Watch: Will they or won’t they?
19 Feb 2010 Leave a Comment
in Minnesota Trail Tags: wolves
Semi-endangered species reproduction alert: The Minnesota Trail’s two largest canids are on Wolf Watch this month. In lay terms, this means it’s their breeding season, and volunteers take half-hour turns with a clipboard, a chair and an electric blanket (the trail’s walkway and wolf-viewing room are semi-enclosed but chilly), watching this pair to see if they show any interest in each other at all. We take notes, and in the event of a “tie” — wolves standing back-to-back, hindquarter-to-hindquarter — we are to alert zookeepers by radio at once.
Last week, our male and female pleased everyone by trotting around and showing off their gorgeousness: he, massive-necked and multicolored; she, slender and silvery. Both were out of sight when I heard yipping and howling; leaving the wolf-viewing room to follow the sound, I found the female at her exhibit’s edge, muzzle pointed skyward (moments before this photo was taken), howling — presumably at the four male coyotes next door, whom she must have glimpsed through the foliage before sitting down to howl at them with her back turned.
At 12 years old, this fellow could be considered a wee bit old for the 2-year-old female whose pups he’s supposed to sire. When I saw them interact, he was usually chasing her, and barely getting close enough to sniff the tip of her tail. In one fleeting shared moment, they bumped noses, and he curled his lip as if considering, then reconsidering, a snarl. When I explained the situation to husband-wife visitors who wondered why I had a clipboard, the husband put a human slant on the elderly he-wolf’s reticence: “Maybe he doesn’t want to go to jail.”
Neither wolf showed their summertime affinity for napping, but this one took a few minutes to find some high ground and bask in the sun. Amid all the pressure to be productive — and, in these wolves’ case, reproductive — her restful moments reminded her admirers that sometimes, it’s more than enough just to be.
