Shaun Ellis - The Man Who Lives with Wolves

THE MAN WHO

LIVES WITH

WOLVES

SHAUN ELLIS

WITH PENNY JUNOR

HarperCollins Publishers

I would like to dedicate this book to the memory of my grandfather, Gordon Ellis. Thank you, Old Man, for your patient teaching; your wisdom and knowledge is with me wherever I go. I was once told by my brother Levi’s people, the Nez Percé, that someone only dies if you forget them. You will be in my thoughts forever.

Cover

Title Page THE MAN WHO LIVES WITH WOLVES SHAUN ELLIS WITH PENNY JUNOR HarperCollins Publishers

Dedication I would like to dedicate this book to the memory of my grandfather, Gordon Ellis. Thank you, Old Man, for your patient teaching; your wisdom and knowledge is with me wherever I go. I was once told by my brother Levi’s people, the Nez Percé, that someone only dies if you forget them. You will be in my thoughts forever.

Author’s Note Author’s Note When you are living with wolves, all that matters is staying alive and protecting the pack; days slip into weeks, weeks into years. Time, as we know it, has no relevance and I want to apologize in advance if I am a little fuzzy about dates and times. I have never kept a diary, never been a letter writer, and have never hung on to anything. For much of my life I have lived out of a rucksack so have very few possessions of any sort. There is very little, therefore, to remind me about when the various events that took place in my life actually happened. If I have attributed something to the wrong year, please bear with me. The events themselves I remember as if they were yesterday.

Preface— Touching a Nerve

Chapter One— A Special Relationship

Chapter Two—A Childhood in Rural Norfolk

Chapter Three—A Wolf at the Window

Chapter Four—A Misspent Youth

Chapter Five— For Queen and Country

Chapter Six— Up Close and Personal

Chapter Seven—A Question of Morality

Chapter Eight—A Ticket to a New Life

Chapter Nine— Found Out

Chapter Ten —Earning a Crust

Chapter Eleven —The Call of the Wild

Chapter Twelve—A Waiting Game

Chapter Thirteen— Worth the Wait

Chapter Fourteen— The Patter of Tiny Feet

Chapter Fifteen —A Narrow Escape

Chapter Sixteen —Another Way

Chapter Seventeen —The Proof of the Pudding…

Chapter Eighteen —Divided Loyalty

Chapter Nineteen —Finding a Home

Chapter Twenty —Poland

Chapter Twenty-one —Making Contact

Chapter Twenty-two —A Harsh Lesson

Chapter Twenty-three— We Are What We Eat

Chapter Twenty-four— Knowing Your Place

Chapter Twenty-five —Back to Basics

Chapter Twenty-six— Family Values

Chapter Twenty-seven —A Life Apart

Chapter Twenty-eight —A Curious Coincidence

Chapter Twenty-nine—A Soul Mate

Chapter Thirty —The Miracle That Is the Wolf

Chapter Thirty-one— Pushing the Boundaries

Chapter Thirty-two —Breakdown

Chapter Thirty-three —I Have a Dream

Acknowledgments

Index

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

When you are living with wolves, all that matters is staying alive and protecting the pack; days slip into weeks, weeks into years. Time, as we know it, has no relevance and I want to apologize in advance if I am a little fuzzy about dates and times. I have never kept a diary, never been a letter writer, and have never hung on to anything. For much of my life I have lived out of a rucksack so have very few possessions of any sort. There is very little, therefore, to remind me about when the various events that took place in my life actually happened. If I have attributed something to the wrong year, please bear with me. The events themselves I remember as if they were yesterday.

I was helping out at a wildlife center in Hertfordshire, one of the home counties, just north of London. A man appeared outside the wolf enclosure one day, pushing a child in an old-fashioned wheelchair that looked almost Victorian, with a large rectangular tray on the front of it. I was immediately struck by how out of place it looked. He told me that he and his son, who may have been thirteen or fourteen and who, I could see at a glance, was severely disabled, had driven all the way from Scotland, a distance of around five hundred miles. He had heard that we allowed members of the public to interact with the wolves and he wanted his son to meet one.

I was surprised that this man had gone to such lengths to show his son a wolf. The child didn’t look as though he would get anything out of the encounter. He sat immobile, silent, staring into space, and I doubted that he would even be able to stroke the animal’s fur. Normally, I loved this part of the job. Children arrived with such preconceptions. They pulled back and screamed when the wolf came near, convinced by all the stories they’d read and the cartoons they’d watched, that wolves were sly, vicious creatures that ate grandmothers, blew down the houses of little pigs, and ripped the throats out of little girls. I had grown up with exactly the same terror. It had taken me many years to discover that wolves are actually shy, intelligent animals with a very sophisticated social structure, whose bloodthirsty reputation is not deserved. I found nothing more gratifying than watching children touch the wolves and listen to what I had to tell them about these animals, and watch their prejudice and ignorance fade away.

I felt almost evangelical about this. I thought that if children could feel their coats and look them in the eye, they could make up their own minds about them so that in time, future generations will perhaps be ready to give back to wolves the place in our world that is rightfully theirs.

Once upon a time wolves and men lived alongside one another, each respecting and benefiting from the other’s way of life. Sadly, those days are gone and I believe that we are the poorer for that. The natural balance in nature that they promoted has been whittled away and several species, including our own, have been allowed to go unchecked and become diseased—in the truest sense of the word.

This may be a little fanciful but I believe that as well as healing the natural world and restoring its balance, human society could benefit from having wolves roaming the forests once more. We could learn a lot from the loyalty they display to family members, the way they educate and discipline their young, the way they look after their own, and the circumstances in which they use their considerable weaponry to kill. The world is not yet ready for that but I like to think that in some small way my work of the last twenty years might have begun the process.