Ursa, last surviving offspring of Faust or Mephisto passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on June 8, 2004. Seen moving around about an hour before her death was discovered, there was nothing to indicate that she was about to take her final leave.

Ursa was born to Lailah and probably Mephisto of the main pack. As a youngster she had an odd colored eye. One retained a fleck of baby blue in its predominantly green iris until October of 1989. Most puppies lose the baby blue in their eyes before the end of June. By the spring of 1989 we could see that Ursa's eye was turning gold just very very slowly.

In October of her first year she also sustained a greenstick fracture in her hind leg. We took her out of the pack for a while to restrict her movement since the break was not the sort to be splinted, gave her extra calcium, and hoped for the best. The site did form bridging callus, but then the callus telescoped in on itself, leaving Ursa with a permanent limp or swivel in her hind leg. This did not slow her down appreciably; and by the spring of 1989 she was the dominant female puppy. (Her brother Chinook was the dominant puppy uber alles.)

She tested humans too. By "measuring" them. Measuring is a type of inhibited bite in which a wolf puts its jaws around some part of another wolf or, in this case human. After using its jaws as calipers once or twice, the wolf taking "measurements" may follow up with a hearty pinch. In May 1989, Ursa took a visiting professor's head in her mouth and measured it. "I don't mind - she's very gentle." protested the professor as I had someone stop Ursa's measuring. This was a behavior to be watched and squelched. The next day Ursa measured a volunteer's head and then squeezed it hard. We did not stop people visiting her, but did continue to intervene when she looked as if she were about to take measurements, and she eventually stopped taking measurements of humans.

Instead she turned her interest to becoming a tool using mammal, earning the right to a "jogs with scissors" T shirt. When we had to replace the old skirting in Wolf Woods West, I looked up to see Ursa approaching us along the fence. She grinned hugely around the yellow handles of the pruning shears, while carrying them points turned safely away from her, as everyone should be taught to do. Instead of flourishing the shears and inviting chase, she came right up to us to have her trophy admired. We petted her and praised her. This was not enough to get her to relinquish her treasure. Her eyes were twinkling but her jaws were clamped tightly around the yellow handles. Instead of wrestling and tug-of-war to get them back, we sat her up on her haunches and traded her a "bunny lesson" for the shears. In a bunny lesson the wolf lounges back against a human for support while the human stimulates the bilateral scratch reflex down the midline of the wolf's chest and belly. Ideally the wolf relaxes completely and then you can give them shots, draw blood, take giant yellow-handled scissors away from them, and they don't mind. When she thoroughly blissed out and relaxed her grip, then we gently removed the shears from her jaws.

By late November 1989 Ursa had slipped down to #2 female yearling and her cousing Altair was #1 female yearling. This was not entirely due to Altair's efforts. Chinook "helped."

In the fall of 1990 Ursa's leg had sufficiently stabilized for her to go on wolf-bison demonstrations. She immediately showed the same talent as her brother Chinook and double first cousins, Altair and Vega. She joined the dream team of black wolves, a dream team we found we dared not let hunt together too often for fear they would seriously injure or kill a bison. Instead we put members of the dream team with other pack members showing less skill and determination and only occasionally took the whole dream team out together.

In 1991 Ursa showed us that she did not tolerate people "committing maintenance" in, or next to, her enclosure and to the end of her life we had to be careful about letting her have access to someone she had recently seen "committing maintenance," unless it was someone who had known her from puppyhood.

In the late winter and early spring of 1993, Ursa was so aggressive to the other wolves, except the alphas, we thought she might drive out Akili, Vega, and Aurora. So we did something we had only done once before: remove the aggressor. The level of aggression did go down after that and we did take Chinook to visit Ursa, letting them go for romps in the pasture from time to time, but from then on, Ursa lived a singleton life. Except for "aunting" puppies.

Ursa Muzzle-Greeting Imbo, Then the Alpha Male back in 1990

A Winter Portrait of Ursa back in 1994

In April of 1994 a tornado came through Wolf Park, destroying Ursa's pen around her. Fortunately she was still in the area the fence had enclosed. I had to enter the area with a leash and wait for her to stop her panicky circling and lean against me long enough to be leashed. Then we slowly, and with several setbacks, made our way to an empty holding pen.

After the tornado we moved Ursa over to East Lake. This was back in the days when the park kept a flock of sheep as a combination exhibit of sheep plus livestock guard dog, and as solar powered, self-propelled lawnmowers. My favorite old ewe, Parsley was not doing well that year. Rather than leave her to be jostled away from food by the flock , I moved her into the corridor around the smaller enclosures at East Lake. Parsley, who was very social with humans, one day tried to follow us into Ursa's pen. Understandably annoyed when we pushed her away, Parsley stood right up at the fence, and when Ursa rushed her, Parsley butted her through the wire. Ursa managed to grab a small tuft of Parsley's wooly topknot.

Once at East Lake Ursa found she had a splash tank all to herself. Watching someone fill it with water was exciting but it was also the start, I think, of Ursa "hunting interns" or anyone else she had not known since puppyhood, for sport when they were "committing maintenance" outside her enclosure. We did find that Ursa was friendly and outgoing with people, including interns, if she met them in one of the large pastures. On one such occasion she ran around giggling and jumped up to lick people on their faces. Since she had just rolled exuberantly in green bison dung, not everyone wanted to receive Ursa's kisses.

Once Ursa learned that we'd take her out on walks she usually cooperated with being leashed, at least when being leashed meant being outward bound. I recall one day in early 1995. I was patting Ursa and a leash, in my coat pocket from walking someone else, came snaking out, and hung down a few inches. Ursa got a huge, goofy grin when she saw the leash and spun herself into a very creditable heel position next to the leash. I started to tell her that I had not planned to walk her but halfway through the sentence I discovered that she was right. I couldn't disappoint that Ursa Grin ™. She was so excited about going to the pasture that I thought I might take an hour or more before she'd be willing to be caught again. Instead, after about thirty minutes, she came wiggling among us an put herself in heel position next to the pocket with the leash in it. I took the leash out and showed it to her. She smiled broadly and held quite still while I put it on, and then she danced to the gate and back to her pen.

That year also marked Ursa's entry into the world of art. Everyone needs a hobby, but when she started making scale models of the Grand Canyon, and Mammoth Cavern, we sometimes wished she'd taken up bird watching, stamp collecting, or tatting lace. For the next several years Ursa often acted as though "driven by her art." She excavated under huts, causing us to install landscaping logs under them so that they would not fall into the capacious cellars she dug for them. Besides repeated studies of the Grand Canyon and Mammoth Cavern, she also made an interactive art form, which we named the "tractor trap," underneath one of the maintenance corridors. On another occasion she again dug a small tunnel with a chamber at the end of it under one of the corridors. When we arrived to do clean up we spied a twinkling Ursa eye peering up at us through a little peephole in the roof of the chamber. We had to put her in the nursery with the puppies while we filled in the tunnel and chamber, an act of art desecration which took us the rest of the morning. Ursa did not mind much. She had several extra hours with the puppies as a result.

In 1998 Ursa's art gained recognition in an unusual venue. She provided a large number of holes for a young M.S. candidate in archeology. April Gaff and her husband, Don, came down to measure and photograph wolf-created holes in the ground, to see if there was a reliable way to distinguish them from holes dug by prehistoric humans. April wondered if some of the holes accepted by archaeological academe as postholes, little fire pits, and temporary cache holes dug by humans, might actually be of canine origin. When they contacted us about studying wolf-dug holes, they were charmed to study the work of Miss Fur Covered Backhoe.

By the fall of 1999 we noticed that age was creeping up on Miss Bear. She did not undertake any major excavations, sculpting, or landscaping projects. Other than that she still got around nearly as well as ever, though I no longer saw her "levitate" onto hut roofs.

Though it had been years since we took Ursa in with the bison herd, one day we did allow her a field run in the same pasture as a single, elderly bison bull. The bull was dust bathing in a wallow. Ursa went to the edge of the wallow and poised on the edge as if about to lunge at him. Completely unconcerned the bull stood up and shook himself. Then they faced each other, looking as if they were members of AARPP (American Association of Retired Predators and Prey) remembering their glory days when the two of them were in their prime.

Chinook, Ursa and Altair Howl

Ursa Submits to Altair, the Alpha Female

Ursa Looking Cute

In 2001 Ursa and Trillian took part in a stress chemical test for a biologist studying cortisol levels in the scats of wolves in Yellowstone. Ursa, and Trill were controls. Our part in the study consisted of collecting scats from the girls every four hours for twenty-four to thirty six hours. Both old girls seemed to approve of us coming to visit them by flashlight. Ursa mouthed our flashlights gently in modified "muzzle greeting," a sort of substitute for the elongated muzzled humans do not have.

In the last two years of her life, Ursa also made new friends more quickly and easily than at any time in the last ten years. In addition to staff members whom she got to know after she was fully adult, she also made friends with sponsors, interns, two craniosacral therapists, and volunteers. This time in her life she coped with several health problems, showing patience and courage. She lost her voice to pharyngeal paralysis. Her once melodious howl faded to a breathy whisper. She lost the sight of one eye, and accepted several kinds of drops in her eye at least twice a day for weeks. Medicating her eye became an occasion to "behold the power of cheese," as that is what she got for sticking her nose through the fence, to steady her head, while someone pulled her eyelid back and put drops in her eye. Then last fall she suffered a sudden loss of balance. She turned involuntary summersaults, circled, fell down, and leaned to one side. The condition cleared up with antibiotics and rest. Since then she had no recurrence of serious problems. It was a great shock to find that she had died in her sleep on June 8, 2004, but she was at least spared a long, debilitating decline. We were especially grateful that she got to visit this years pups, and have one more strawberry kiwi drink before leaving us all with only our memories of her for comfort.

One of the friends Ursa made late in life was intern, Kelly Farley. We are often asked if we have favorite wolves. I think Kelly put it very well when he said "Your favorite wolf picks you." Ursa, those you picked, will always remember you.