Wolf Park News 2000 |
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December News -- Life at Wolf Park to Date..... |
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As of December 1, 2000 Our new well is working, um, well. Quite well in fact. No longer do we have to haul water all the way from the office 1/4+ mile to Eastlake when the temperature dips below freezing. All this is due to Amanda's getting grants and donations to have Electricity brought over to Eastlake. We also received a generous donation for new visitor center/giftshop building which will be in place by spring as well as a brand new set of bleachers! Oh and bulbs, lots and lots of bulbs. Everybody simply must come out to Wolf Park in early spring to see that! Earlier in the year, we sold bison, bought bison, well one cow, and we discovered bison will guard salt licks from the wolves. The number of sponsored animal soared past 800 -- most ever -- most Interns ever as well. 2000 proved to be quite a busy year; Junior volunteers, new staff, no pups, but fox kits, pack stable for a year... Seneca is still undisputed leader of the pack. Despite a period this summer when he was limping due to an injured toe, sometimes to the point of being three legged lame, he has not been tested or challenged that we human observers have seen. Marion continues to pester him but less than the other wolves and as their hormonal profiles change with the season, each acts as though the other is markedly more "appealing." Miska continues to cope with our "wheelbarrow diplomacy" method of introducing three new staff members, Jess Willard, Gale Motter, and Marla Borth, into his circle of friends. He frequently offers submission and greeting to Seneca, but both are suppressing Tristan more these days, as if to remind Tris that his puppy days are over and his term of endless indulgence by adults has ended. The pond started freezing all the way across the Monday before Thanksgiving, and on November 28 Gale saw Tris go out on the ice near the dam and break through. He started floundering and breaking a path to shore about 40 feet away. Seneca, Miska, and Marion ran around the dam and stood on shore, waiting for him. Miska and Seneca waded out to their ankles and stood, stretching out forepaws and patting the pond surface. Tris looked at them and decided he'd rather stay in the water. After a few minutes Seneca and Miska waded out, took young Master Tristan by his ears, hauled him out on shore and held him down and squeaked him. Chetan was mobbed in September and spent several days hiding IN the island, but is currently living with the pack and taking part in howls, even "having episodes" which make him quite conspicuous during group howls. He has been noticing that Erin, Maya, and even Marion, are getting "cuter" as we get closer to the wolves' breeding season. Being omega does not stop Chetan from flirting. Marion is still called The Barbarian more often than The Rotarian. She has been harassing Erin and Maya to the point that both have repeatedly retreated to the Peninsula, and in Erin's case spending half a week there. Since the pack hung out on the East Side a great deal, Maya and Erin spend most of their time on the west side. It's a pretty good place to be quasi-exiled - they can get human interaction and have helped Monty entertain quite a few school children here on field trips when the rest of the pack preferred to lie up on the Pine Ridge across the pond from the bleachers. The Halloween Pumpkin Fest was a partial success. It was a great success with the wolves who got pumpkins - the main pack and Orca and Trill who got theirs early. Pat messed up the other pumpkins by eviscerating them several days before we got around to stuffing them and they got moldy and so soft they were unuseable. Fortunately this did not happen with the Thanksgiving Turkeys which were well received even though they still had all their feathers and had to be plucked. The wolves were enthusiastic on discovering that "some DISassembly is required" and quickly made their enclosures look like the aftermath of The Great Pillow Wars (an incident little known, and that mostly by rumor and urban legend, in history). Over at East Lake, The Mini Pack had a visit from their human mom, Ginny Kunch, who now lives in Alaska. It had been four years since they last saw her and NK, Chani, and Sierra were all plainly delighted. They all wanted to demonstrate that even at eleven years they can still jump up. In November they also had a visit from NK's friend Billy Avoletta, and his girlfriend, Millie. NK remembered how much he likes Billy and greeted him - Sierra also remembered how much fun she had pinching his bottom the last time he visited and she tried to relive the experience. Over in the Pillow Pack (no this is not the origin of the Great Pillow Wars) Apollo has continued to display symptoms of "alphaitis" so we have been restricting who can go in with him - certainly for the fall and winter and next spring we'll see. He and Karin are still very affectionate and though Alyeska has to grovel, he is often affectionate with both of them. Staff member Marla Borth told me about a day when they were both on a hut and he reached over and nuzzled Karin and she reached over and nuzzled him back which excited him so much that he accidentally rolled right off the hut. Marla says Karin looked at him as if to say "you are such a klutz." and he, settling his fur with a shake, looked as if he wanted to say "I'm all right. I meant to do that. Yeah. Really." Marla added that she thinks Apollo is completely in love with Karin. Kiri and Socrates have continued their stable relationship including much brotherly argument. They often have "drive by shoutings". Kiri started growling at us humans when we came in but we ignored this, also ignoring him, and refusing to pet or scratch him until the growling stopped. So far this has worked, and he then offers rubbing on humans and velcro behavior that reliably gets him a good ear scratch. Kiri is still alert to chances to grab a five gallon bucket. He doesn't carry them by the rim, he puts his mouth around them and only has to squash them a little to get a grip and make them fit. One Saturday this fall he faked Pat out beautifully and grabbed her bucket. She amazed him with her speed as she grabbed it back. Among the singletons, things are relatively peaceful. Deneb has had a couple of chiropractic visits and liked them very much. We are in the process of getting another scheduled. Deneb was quite upset when the new well was dug at East Lake but moving her to a pen farther from the equipment helped. She is still eager to fence fight with any other wolves on the property and even acts as if she wants to fence fight with the lawn mower. Ursa is making new friends among the staff - John Davis, Gale Motter and Jess Willard are all going in with Mark or Monty or Pat as back up. Ursa likes this but we are not letting her new friends "commit maintenance" in her enclosure. Trillian, our oldest wolf, had something like a stroke in mid-October. Ginny, the Mini's human mom is a vet in her other life. Since she was visiting that weekend, she was able to do an immediate assessment and we got Dr. Becker out shortly. Dr. Becker is Dr. Harper's associate and they are both helping with the wolves. Trill has been recovering well, and is currently on Prednisone at a safe low, dose. Her "incident" seemed milder than last year's stroke, and though her balance and ability to walk a straight line was impaired, she quickly regained them. She still lists a little to the left, but she is very bouncy and has a wonderful attitude. Aurora has been getting a lot of attention because she has been having ear drops and eye salve put in her ears and eyes for weeks. With a bout of cold weather including repeated frosts she may get a welcome break from having her eyelids pulled down and salve put in. However, she and the ear drops are going to be close companions for sometime to come. WE restrain her by taking unfair advantage of the canine involuntary scratch reflexes and give her more rubs and massages after a treatment. She has also gotten to go on several walks including shopping expeditions in the Gift Shop. Orca was very excited by a visit from one of his human moms this November. Nicky and her husband James stopped by for a visit. Orca was so frantic to greet Nicky face to face that he got airborne twice! Monty and Pat have been trying to get him out for more walks and he is still able to go to the Gift shop and back without a problem. On cold wet days he often seems to have some problems. We are wondering if we will have to pad his pen along the fences this year. AS winter draws on he shows a tendency to sometimes drag his right hind paw a bit more. On the other foot he usually does real steps up onto the raised tree bed in his pen instead of just dragging his hind feet up after him.. Wild Bill is on a diet. He has also finally inherited the three step deck which volunteer Nancy Stewart made for Kai, our older coyote who died in 1996. The deck had been in the next pen and we let Aurora use it. In the last year or so she stopped getting up on it and now that Orca lives in that pen we decided not to leave something in that he could be tempted to climb and then hurt himself falling off of. Bill still joins in Howl Night programs as an example of Canis latrans, but he doesn't do it as much has he used too, prompting jokes that he has gone out on a weekend evening to see a movie... Chicken Run, for example... |
Phone: (765) 567-2265 Fax: (765) 567-4299 E-Mail Wolf Park Unless otherwise noted, all images © Monty Sloan/Wolf Park Web page © 2000 Monty Sloan / Wolf Park Last revised: Monday, November 20, 2000 |
