Sierra died early in the morning of Tuesday, July 2nd. The previous night Monty and I were shifting wolves into various enclosures at East Lake and we found Sierra lying flat on her side, awake, but unable or unwilling to get up. We moved Chani into another enclosure and then Monty carried Sierra to a holding pen and we phoned one of our veterinarians, Dr. Julia Becker, as well as Dr. Klinghammer, Amanda Shaad and Gale Motter. Dr. Becker came out and examined Sierra, who had meanwhile drunk a little water, and moved around a little under her own power when helped up, and lain down and gotten up and moved around a little more. We provided her with a bowl of ice water and she lay, resting on her elbows, head up, and looking increasingly more comfortable and normal as she lapped water, rested, and lapped some more.

When Dr. Becker arrived she took her temperature, with an ear thermometer, which gave a reading of 103.5. Sierra's color (gums and tongue) was reasonably good and we started her on subcutaneous saline solution, with Gale placing and monitoring the needle to help rehydrate her while Amanda plied her with ice cubes. I was bag lady and held the saline up so it would run into Sierra expeditiously.

Sierra accepted ice cubes from Amanda, but showed a tendency to grump and snap a little if she thought Amanda was taking them away. (Amanda tried picking some up, from under Sierra's chin to offer again, which led to a small misunderstanding.) Between the liter of saline solution and water and ice that Sierra variously lapped and crunched, and had trickle into her, we had gotten close to a liter and a half of fluid into her, which should have corrected the dehydration. At this point she was occasionally getting up and walking around a little and then lying down again

We thought, that evening, that spending several hours Monday morning in the seventeen acre field, with Chani, while East Lake enclosures were mowed had tired Sierra out and probably rendered her stiff and sore. It was the presumed stiffness and soreness we thought had made her reluctant to get up and drink and then she got dehydrated, which made her feel still more crappy and less like getting up. Dr. Becker, once she assured herself that Sierra's color was good, that she had a good load of fluid on board again, and that she was not showing fluid retention in her abdomen, gave Sierra a shot of steroid to reduce soreness and make Sierra feel better and want to drink more on her own.

We left Sierra for the night between 8:30 and 8:45 PM, resting comfortably. She had climbed up on the raised tree bed without help and chose a spot to rest. At this point I really thought we had pulled Sierra back out of a crisis that could have cost her life.

Wednesday morning I went out early to watch the wolves and checked on Sierra between 5:10 and 5:20 a.m. She had moved to another spot, nearer the fence, which would be shaded for another two to two and a half hours. Lying flat on her side, her eyes were open and she rolled her eyes to look at me and pricked an ear in the direction of my voice when I spoke to her. Rather than disturb her further I went and did my morning wolf watch of the wolves in the Turtle Lake Enclosure and then left about 6:30 to get a bag of small, easily consumed, ice cubes from the gas station on State Road 43. On the way I discovered I had a half flat tire and went back to the Park, filled the tire from the air compressor and heard air hissing out of the tire as I turned the compressor off. Driving straight to the nearest garage, waiting until they opened up, finding that the tire was basically road kill, having the spare put on, and completing the interrupted journey to get ice, meant I got back a little before 8:00. Going down the corridor, I found Sierra still and unmoving. It took me a second to realize she was not breathing.

I looked over at Chani across the corridor. She was watching, as she had watched the previous evening. I don't think she took her eyes off Sierra and us then. A wave of sadness washed over me, for Chani, who would now be without her sister as well as her brother, as much or more as for Sierra, who had lived to the upper end of the average range of life for a captive wolf.

With any death there is emotional fallout, and there are the inevitable logistics. In this case it was calls to staff and making arrangements for a necropsy, and also letting Chani sniff Sierra's body. We brought it into the enclosure where Chani had spent the night. She sniffed the hind quarters and sniffed the hind leg from which Amanda drew several cc's of blood the previous night to run a panel of tests. (We'd been concerned about loss of kidney function due to dehydration on top of the loss of function that occurs as part of normal aging.) After sniffing she drooled a little and shook her head vigorously from side to side. She repeated this several times. The behavior was the same as what I have seen various wolves do after sniffing something noxious, like a popped tick. She went away. We waited several minutes and when she did not come back, John Davis and I picked up the body and placed it in Amanda's arms - she had ascertained it was easier if two people picked it up but one person carried. Chani rushed us when she saw her sister's body being carried away. I stepped in. Chani, stopped, looking a bit baffled.

Sometimes a necropsy does not tell you a clear cause of death. In this case the gross pathology - the appearance of the organs as distinct from a microscopic view of cells, and petri dishes full of cultures from the interior of the body, cultures in which microbes may or may not grow, told us a lot of what we needed to know. There had been no chance of pulling Sierra back from the brink of death. Oh, we had made her significantly more comfortable with the saline and the ice water, and probably allowed her a last few hours of normal sleep, but Sierra had simply come to the end of her life. She had cancer. A tumor a bit larger than a tennis ball was in one lung and her liver had been extensively invaded by tumors.