Shaun Ellis - The Man Who Lives with Wolves

I knew scent was important and I discovered that if I put on different clothes or washed or ate different food, the beta male would start nipping me again until he was satisfied that the new smell didn’t mean I was going to react differently to his approach or that my mood had changed. The other high-ranking wolves did the same thing, but he didn’t involve every wolf in the enclosure. The lower-ranking members of the pack, I was to learn, don’t question what the higher-ranking members decide; they are foot soldiers—they have an important job to do, but it is not to think for themselves.

I felt deeply flattered to have these creatures trust me so much that they were prepared to rub themselves against me, and an incredible sense of achievement to be tolerated in this way. It meant more to me than any human relationship I had established. I found myself looking forward to the end of each day when I could go and be with them again, and I stayed longer and longer during the nights. It was such a privilege to be allowed to sit among this family group and to feel that in some small way I was becoming a part of it. I was beginning to need these creatures that I had been frightened of for so long; I wanted to be with them. But what did they think of me? What did they think I was? They were always curious when I arrived, but what did they think when I left them? Did they miss me? I was attributing human values to them, and human emotions, which I came to realize are not part of their world. I had to learn to turn off my own.

After a while, they started greeting me when I went into the enclosure during the daytime and testing me in the same way as they did at night, a sure sign that they recognized and accepted me. There would be some nips and a bit of interaction that the other keepers began to notice. It felt good to see their reaction, to watch the surprise on their faces and to see them revising their view about these creatures that they fended off with broom handles. Little by little the days and nights merged and I found a week had gone by, and the only times that I had been away from the wolves was when I’d slipped out for some food. I once took a sleeping bag in with me but that was a mistake. The wolves tore it to shreds. They accepted my clothing but nothing else; and the truth was I needed nothing else. When I lay down to sleep, they settled down with me and the warmth of their bodies kept me warm. My excitement at what I had achieved with them was hard to contain.

I never allowed myself to feel complacent, however. I knew that anything could happen and there was no guarantee that because my last interaction had been good, the next one would be also. Every time I went into the enclosure I was full of apprehension, wondering what would happen next. I watched the way they behaved with one another—the way they wrestled and played, and snarled and snapped—and knew that if they started to treat me the same way, I wasn’t going to be able to cope. My skin wasn’t as tough as theirs. I wasn’t covered in thick fur and if they were as rough with me as I’d seen them be with one another, it would not only hurt, but I could sustain serious injuries. Would they recognize that my body was completely different from theirs? Their necks and throats, two of the areas they used most frequently to communicate, were also the best-protected parts of their bodies. My throat was one of the most vulnerable. One bite like the ones I had seen them give their fellow wolves would have been it for me.

But that sense of danger was as appealing as it was appalling. It was like watching a horror movie from behind a pillow, not wanting to see, not wanting to turn it off, and not being able to resist peeping. The excitement and the pleasure I derived from being with the wolves outweighed the danger. I felt comfortable with them; I admired the respectful way they interacted with one another, the hierarchy that obviously governed the pack, the discipline they meted out to members who stepped out of line or pushed in to feed before their elders and betters had eaten. I wasn’t able to articulate it at the time, but what I felt most of all was a sense of belonging. Here was a group of some of the most feared and revered creatures on earth, and they had accepted me into that group. I had taken a rigorous entry exam and been tested within an inch of my life, and by a mixture of luck and intuition, I had passed.

But I wasn’t allowed to bask in self-satisfaction for long. I went into the enclosure one evening, exhausted after a long day, and fell asleep. I was lying flat out, snoring my head off, and without warning Reuben ran over and bounced onto my chest, landing on all four feet. More than 120 pounds of wolf on your chest is quite a wake-up call. As soon as he’d landed, he bounced off again and stood looking at me quizzically before setting off around the boundary, scent marking. He kept looking back, as if wanting me to follow, and I made the mistake of ignoring him and going back to sleep. What I didn’t realize until it was too late was that he was trying to teach me to identify his scent, and it was an important lesson because his job was to look after the alpha pair, which included disciplining around the kill. Any food that had his scent on it was reserved for them.

The alphas are the most important members because they are the decision makers and without them the pack is leaderless. So their survival is paramount. If food is scarce, they will eat first and they may be the only ones who do eat. Other members of the pack will go hungry, even the pups, and starve if necessary. And the rest of the pack knows better than to touch something that has the beta’s scent on it. As it was, I learned the hard way.

It was customary for the local shoot to drop off birds during the season and one day they delivered three ducks to the enclosure. At that time I didn’t know much about the different foods wolves eat or the value they place on them. During the winter months, when it’s cold and there’s snow on the ground, fatty, greasy ducks are a valuable food source for the high-ranking animals. The alpha pair took the first two ducks and although I didn’t want to eat it, I thought I had better protect my share, so I picked up the third, unaware that the beta wolf had laid an arc of scent around it.

Within a split second I was on the ground. Reuben had come at me from about ten meters away with such force I felt as if I had been hit by a train. The duck went up in the air, and I fell onto my back and lay there, completely winded while he took my face in his jaws and squeezed. He was growling all the while, a deep menacing growl, and saliva was collecting around his lips. I could feel the bones in my cheeks bending under the pressure. It sounded like a handful of dry twigs being crushed. I thought, this is it—no question. He’s going to kill me, and I fleetingly wondered what I could do, but I was being pinned to the ground with such force that my options were limited. So I decided to do what he’d already taught me: show him respect and trust, knowing that if he had wanted to kill me, with the amount of weaponry he had, I’d have been dead by now. He was teaching me a lesson. So I tried to tilt my head to display my throat, which I’d been taught was the vulnerable trust area, and as I did so, he moved his grip from my face to my throat, still growling. He held me in a viselike grip for a few seconds longer and then he let go and backed off, still growling, his teeth bared.

If I had read the signs properly, and known what to look for, I would never have taken that duck in the first place. I would have noticed the progression in his behavior to that high-energy snapping and snarling, which should have drawn my attention to his weaponry, as it’s designed to do. He was warning me off and I would have seen his ear posture telling me that he was protecting the duck from afar. They would have been flat, going out like airplane wings, to indicate that he was covering something that belonged to him.