I was so thrilled to be running free! After 12 days in a national park, having to go everywhere on leash, this was heaven. It was a city RV park in a little Montana town, and mom was just excited as Rocket and I were. Away from the park but close by was a walking track. Mom could let us roam without getting pulled along or having to scold us every time we couldn’t take our noses off a scent. It was a wide walking trail of dirt and gravel, beside a really high grassy area with some low trees off to the side of that. I plowed through the tall grass following the scent of something peculiar, something I’d never discovered before. The grass was so tall that no one could see me in there sniffing away, and I could hardly see my feet as I swam through the grass. But I could smell. | Who needs a visual when you’ve got a nose that’s about a ba-zillion times better than a person’s, and even better than a pesky cat’s. I once heard mom say that the part of a dog’s brain that analyzes smells is like 40% greater than her’s! And I pride myself on smelling things she never knows are about, and I especially like the stinky ones like fish bones, poop and dead things. Well, today my nose was working overtime. |
It didn’t take long but soon, I happened upon what was smelling so strange. It was a cat size waddling animal that let me walk right up to him and put my nose on his butt – just like another dog! Only it wasn’t a dog, it was a spiky thing that caused me more pain than I’ve ever known! It didn’t sniff back, it didn’t bark, and it certainly didn’t try to make me feel better. I could hear mom in the distance calling my name and buzzing my collar (it has a beep that alerts me to come back to her). But all I could do was wiggle in the grass and swat at these little needles that were sticking out of my nose. Some were even stuck in my tongue and mouth. I tried rolling and swatting but then decided to bee-line it back to her for help. Only when I got there and she kept calling for me, I couldn’t stop rolling in the dirt and chomping. The pain shot up my nose and tongue and stung so much. She grabbed hold of my collar and tried to move me along back to the RV while Rocket stayed a few paces away. (I think he knows what this animal is and what these needles can feel like). Back at the RV, Terry took a mean looking hand tool and tried to pull the needles out of my nose. Mom held me down because I was squirming to get away from both of them. Terry got a handful of them out and boy did it hurt like heck. Soon mom and I were in the car driving somewhere a man named Logan petted me and stuck me in the leg with another needle. (This just wasn’t my day). Pretty soon I fell asleep and when I woke up the man who petted me looked me over and I got to go “home.” (Home being the RV.) The rest of the day I took it easy sleeping on the seat, dreaming of how I’d seek my revenge if I ever came upon this crazy prickly animal again. Pretty soon we stopped for the night at another place where I could be off leash. But the whole ordeal had made me groggy so I didn’t go running off into the bushes looking for new adventures. It’s been couple of weeks since we returned to Colorado, and darned if one of those needles didn’t start poking out of my nose. Dad took out the hand tool and pulled it out though. I sure hope that’s the end of the needles for me!
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The big bad wolf…long maligned as a predator that needed exterminating…fierce canine teeth and jawbones, bares his teeth and opens his mouth…ready to regurgitate meat for his pups. This is a scene that now unfolds each spring in Yellowstone since 1995 when gray wolves were reintroduced to the park. A scene we’ve been fortunate enough to witness, from a far. Recently, we watched wolves for days in Yellowstone, and it’s always a thrill. We camped just outside the northeastern entrance of the park - first time we did that. And it allowed us to drive only 35 miles to Slough Creek where the Junction Butte pack has a den-site and where they and their ancestors have been raising wolves for over a decade. Back in 2010, Terry and I watched members of the pack come and go a few times, but we were camping a long ways away from that area. (The park is huge covering over 2.2 million acres - bigger than RI & DE and can take hours to drive from one end to the other.) This time, we tried out Pilot Creek National Forest campground out the NE entrance, passed Cooke City. Several other National Forest campgrounds are closer to the entrance but were either closed for the season or opened after we arrived in the area. We loved the campsite at Pilot Creek because it sits beside the raging creek, which makes a great soundtrack for falling asleep. Each day we would choose a day part - either early am or dusk to drive into the park and look for wolves, bears and other critters. I wrote about some of the interesting behavior we observed while in the park in my last blog, but I want to share a bit more about the wolves of Yellowstone. Lamar Valley is just one of several places in the park to look for wolves, but in my opinion it offers the best chance of seeing them, and it’s a beautiful valley cut out by the Lamar River where the deer and the antelope play….and where the bison consort. If you hit the park between May and late June, you also have the benefit of the wolf den which raises the odd for you to see wolves. Usually around the end of June or early July, the pups are big enough to leave the den, and the whole pack will move off to rendezvous sites - areas where the adults hunt from while the younger animals and a babysitter (yearling or aunt or uncle) will spend a good portion of the day. While we were in Lamar Valley, pack members were coming and going often being greeted by the young pups who enthusiastically come bounding along jumping up to greet the adults and lick their faces. This behavior is meant to stimulate the adults to regurgitate meat (since the pups are old enough to eat solid foods now) from recent kills which may have happened 10 miles away. The pack we watched moving through the valley, or lounging and feeding at the den-site has twelve pups and it seems there are three nursing mothers. Two had litters that didn’t make it, and the twelve were born to the alpha female. Interestingly this alpha overthrew the alpha of last year with the help of another female. Then she asserted herself as the dominatrix over the sister that helped her challenge the alpha last year. I understand the current pups belong to #907, and I learned this by listening to an expert on the pack, Rick McIntyre who has written several books on this pack, one I’ve read: THE RISE OF WOLF 8. I believe he has a new book coming out in October. If you go to Slough Creek during May-early July, you’ll find pull-offs along the 2.5 mile long dirt road and several hillsides and places where groups of tourists gather to watch the den-site - a place the tour groups stop with their visitors in vans for a quick chance at seeing the canids. The den is way across a creek and up a hill between two sets of pine trees with some green space below it marked by a lone dead tree. This is a great spot if you’re lucky enough to see the pups come down the path and gambol around in the short grass by the dead tree. But it’s really distant, and hard to see activity below a ridge just below the den. We have great binoculars, and got to see a lot, but it’s best to bring a scope. (By the way, you can rent scopes at some of the gift shops or hotels in Silver Gate or Cooke City.) Something else you can spend $8.95 on is a chart showing the park’s packs for the year, listing pack names and make-up of the adults and yearlings - no pup counts since those change to often. This laminated sheet (pictured below) also tells the sex and number for the radio collared wolves of known members, and on the back explains terminology for the various shades of the wolves’ coats. I have to point out here the black wolves are easier to spot moving through the sage brush and brown landscapes; whereas, the gray or white colored wolves easily blend in. The Slough Creek den-site is well known and watched, and many wolf lovers plan their vacation around the den, timing their visits to increase their chances of seeing the wolves. We met people who’ve been coming since the wolves were introduced to the park, people who journal about which members of the pack they see any given day, people who get into the park by 4:30am to be in place when pack members are active - either because they’re returning from a night of hunting or because the pups are active before the day heats up. There are websites and chat groups of people following the packs, and for $20 you can subscribe to the “Yellowstone Reports” which gives updates on the packs. There are even fanatics who purchase radios that scan a certain frequency to hear members of the wolf tracking teams announce any activity away from the den-site. We met Lynn and Ray who know all the major players, both the bear trackers and the wolf trackers; they had their scanner on while we were watching the den-site with them. The announcement came over that there were five wolves bedded down near trash can. I didn’t know all the pet names for areas along the road in Lamar Valley so Lynn came with me in the car while we drove to “trash can.” We waited and watched as a lone black wolf wandered from the east and sniffed out the pack members lying just out of our sight. But we saw them get up and greet each other and then go back to sleeping, out of our sight line. I decided to drive east to a rest room, and when we returned we were fortunate enough to spend another hour watching as these wolves began to trot through the valley. One swam in the river, several seemed to check out some geese on the bank, and while we watched, four moved west towards Slough Creek and scared off some pronghorn. It was delightful to just follow their movements for over an hour and a half. Lynn and I returned to the den-site where Terry, Lynn’s husband Ray and another man on the hillside area had watched the occasional pup or adult move in and out of brush the mile away on the hill. Then Terry and I went back to the valley and picked up watching a lone wolf come close to the road as though wanting to cross to head back to the den through the “secret passage” (an area nicknamed by the wolf tracking team) through the trees and over the hill where the day before returning wolves walked within 20 yards from where Jerry and another gentleman were standing and where Terry had been sitting this morning. But I digress…the lone black wolf decided against the traffic jam created by his presence and rather than move to the secret passage, he went back into the valley. Rather than follow his progress back to the den where we had just left, we moved down the valley to the east where we found several lounging pack members in an area across the Lamar River. They didn’t move for a long while, and we watched for some time as they lifted their heads occasionally and we tried to tell folks where to look for a glimpse. But without high powered optics, it’s really hard sometimes to see them unless they come out into the open. One of the people we befriended at the den-site (who comes yearly) emailed me that after we left for Glacier National Park, the pack made a kill near the Institute which is in the valley and a place wolf lovers congregate when looking for activity… a place with a hillside to give you an advantage of looking down into the grasses. I’m sure people in the park that day got some good looks at the wolves. One day while I was looking further west of the valley after hearing another tourist had a close encounter with a black wolf, I missed a chance to see three of the black wolves from the Junction Butte pack travel right down the park road in Lamar Valley, cross up the hill toward the patch of trees and move through the secret passage before returning to the den-site. I missed this chance but saw someone I’d met at the den-site who told me about this event and showed me his video. He said it happened about 30 minutes before I quizzed him. So off I drove to the den-site only to hear from Jerry and others how close two of the three black wolves came to them before crossing the creek and moving uphill. As they were explaining this, I glassed up to the den and watched the pair of wolves make their way up the hill to be greeted by the pups. It was a great thrill, even though it was too distant to photograph. In all, we had 43 wolf sightings total over the nine days; that includes the wolf in the Tetons that crossed the road in front of us. I’m so glad the wolves have been returned to Yellowstone, and I hope if you plan a visit to the park you’ll be able to glimpse their lives. For more information about the wolves of Yellowstone, here are some resources: www.Yellowstone.org/wolf-project and www.tracknature.com
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AuthorFormer documentary film producer, wife and mother of one...I'm taking time off to see the US with my husband Terry. Here's where I'll write about our adventures RVing until the money runs out! Archives
August 2021
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