Free Wolves, Boys and Other Things That Might Kill Me by Kristen Chandler Page A

have pups? I thought only the alphas got breeding rights.”
    “In this pack they think there have been as many as three litters at a time.”
    “Is that alpha male crazy?” I say.
    “That’s why people love the Druids. They’re very dramatic and easy to romanticize. Especially Forty-Two. She’s an impressive hunter, and she has clearly identifiable dark circles around her eyes that give her a neurotic look. She does the work and takes the beatings. They’ve started calling her the Cinderella wolf.”
    “Cinderella wolf?”
    “Everybody loves a fairy tale.”
    “It doesn’t sound like a fairy tale to me.”
    Eloise joins in, “This Cinderella will probably have to splinter off like the mom and the sister. It’ll be a shame though. She’s a great hunter.”
    “What will she do?” I say.
    “The other packs around here are highly territorial. She’ll probably have to head out alone for a while until she gets to the perimeter of the park and then look around for a new pack that will take her.”
    “Can she make it alone?”
    Eloise writes a few things in her notes and then remembers we are talking. “A lone wolf is usually a dead wolf if the isolation goes on for long. They can’t hunt big game alone and they wear themselves down.”
    “If Forty-Two’s such a good hunter, what’s the point of driving her out?”
    “Breeding competition.”
    “So it’s like a girl fight?”
    Eloise gets an annoyed look on her face. She says, “Wolves are like people, but they aren’t people.”
    Virgil says, “Deep thoughts, Mom,”
    “I know. I scare myself sometimes,” says Eloise.
    Eloise goes to work, and I stand aside so Virgil can take pictures.
    “I don’t think Forty-Two’s going anywhere today,” says Virgil.
    “Why?” I say.
    “Take a look.”
    I stare into the lens and see Forty-Two’s legs and head above the grass. Forty-Two is sprawled out in full submission, licking at Forty’s legs. Forty looks straight ahead, indifferent. I have to look away. It’s one thing to relate to the things I read in Eloise’s books; it’s another to see the behavior played out at the end of my binoculars.
    I know that wolves’ survival depends on their hierarchical system, but this feels all wrong. Why does Forty-Two take it? The memory of the wolf I saw killed crawls in my insides like a poisonous spider. “I saw a wolf pack kill another wolf this summer for doing the same thing. The Nez Perce pack, I think. The wolf was submitting like that and they shredded it.”
    Eloise says, “We always say ‘survival of the fittest,’ but I think with wolves it’s more ‘survival of the most aggressive.’ Physically there’s no reason for Number Forty-Two to be the kicking bag, except that she’s not willing to fight Forty to be anything else.”
    “Are wolves just born alphas, betas, and omegas?”
    “We used to think that, but what we’ve found by living so close to wolves is that there is a fair amount of transition. Age, injury, pups, offspring all impact a wolf’s social position. Wolves can actually take all those roles in a lifetime.”
    “So what makes the difference between Forty and Forty-Two?”
    Eloise looks off at the Specimen Ridge. “The thing about an alpha, male or female, is that they can lead. When things get desperate they attack instead of retreat.”
    It occurs to me that I’m the luckiest student Eloise has ever had. I get to have the professor all to myself and skip the tests.
    “Why do you study wolves?” I say.
    “I’ve wondered about that myself, KJ. I didn’t start out to study them, that’s for sure. But the more I learned about them the more I was fascinated. They are tenacious killers, but they also sing and play and live in families. They go hard and go home. I respect that in an animal, any animal.”
    “Do you think it’s going to work, having them here?”
    “I hope so. For Yellowstone’s sake. Having them back in the food web gets the elk off the aspen. More