City Beasts by Mark Kurlansky

Author:Mark Kurlansky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-01-25T16:00:00+00:00

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Nose came out from his hiding place, leapt in the river with his jaws open, and crushed the trout, snapping her backbone before swallowing her whole, eggs and all. Nose would go tell the pack about the elk who had moved from the ridge, but all the while, Nose was thinking that these humans didn’t look all that dangerous. They couldn’t even hunt down a fish.

Part Two: Sheepish in Sun Valley

In his heart, the Lord did not fear humans. After all, they were the ones who put him in power. He was just a beta wolf in the north when he was captured. At first he was terrified of their cages and their strange smells. One thing all wolves agreed on, humans smell bad. But they treated him respectfully and brought him down here, where he could start his own pack and rule. They were gentle creatures full of kindness. They put a collar on him with a radio signal and he didn’t like wearing it. At first he would rub his neck against fir trees to try to get it off, but in time he was used to it.

If he even looked at a human he would see the disapproving face in the Lady. The Lady was not a pure gray Canadian wolf. She was partly from a line of Rocky Mountain wolves, and within her nerves and synapses she carried memories of the bad times when they were tortured and beaten and poisoned, when wolf hides hung from houses and almost everyone was killed. She wanted the pack to stay away from the humans.

So when the pack was together, such as on big hunts, when they took elk and the time they got the moose, they all avoided humans and their smell. But now the Lord and a lot of the boys and men had a sense that they were a big pack and didn’t have to fear anything. By summer, when the pups were grown, they would be nineteen. This was a pack that could rule the mountains and even have a presence in the valley.

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