THE WOLF

Our son had always wanted a dog of his own. Any time we walked by the pet store at our local mall he always begged to go in, “just to look”. He didn’t want one of those goofy things you could squish if you didn’t watch where you stepped, he wanted a real dog. So it didn’t surprise us when he came home one day with this cute little puppy that resembled a German Sheppard. I say resembled because he had the same coloring and pointed ears. It was, in fact, a wolf, a Timber Wolf to be exact, or nearly exact. Our son explained to us he was actually 14/16 Timber Wolf, or some such ratio, that made him legal to be sold as a pet. We reluctantly agreed to keep Nike, as our son named him, for a brief trial run.

In an effort to be good parents we studied up on wolves. We learned, for example, that they are not very social, do not like to be around a group of people, generally not trusting and would prefer to be back in the wilds. None of these characteristics surfaced immediately, but there were signs that we were not dealing with your basic lap dog here. First, he began to grow and it was not long before he was up to my waist and his feet were bigger than mine. He had piercing yellow eyes and his head was twice the size of a normal dog. If you had any doubt that the dog/wolf ratio was tilted heavily in favor of the wolf all you had to do was watch him run. I call it a run but it was more like a lope. If you saw him loping alongside a dog that was running you would instantly realize one was on the run while the other was on the hunt.

As Nike grew we became much more familiar with other little quirks of your pet wolf. He liked to eat. I don’t mean the store bought pet food you feed Fido, I mean prey. We happened to live on the side of a hill at the time. One day we walked down the hill and found a little cave where Nike had taken the carcasses of birds, rabbits, squirrels and other critters. He also ate the seat of a neighbor’s motorcycle, a leather jacket of mine, the drapes and parts of several items of household furniture, among other things. This rather disturbed my wife. So much so that one day she said to me “It’s me or the wolf”. This was not a thing you flip a coin over, this was serious and the choice was easy. We began to look for a place for Nike.

While we were looking we had one more little episode. Our next door neighbor had a son attending the local university. Studying to be a doctor, he was enrolled in several lab classes when he learned they were using animals for experiments, specifically two roosters. Having strong feelings about animal rights and being an avid supporter of PETA, this upset him greatly. He soon became involved in a protest at the university that made the papers with an article stating our neighbor had become a hero with the PETA people by rescuing the two roosters. He brought them home with him and placed them in a fenced in side yard for protection.

The next morning my wife went out to get the paper and noticed there were rooster feathers everywhere. Fortunately she is an early riser so she scrambled quickly to clean up the mess. Later that day we listened with great concern as our neighbors talked of the disappearance of the roosters.

Expediting our search for a place for Nike we found a gentleman that was willing to take him. He explained that he was a Native American Indian and that wolves are sacred to the Indians. He would take Nike to their reservation. My daughter and I drove him to their home where he would spend the night before making the trip the next day to the reservation. The next morning he called me and said “You didn’t tell me he liked to dig”. Nike had dug a six foot hole in his back yard.