Well, really a howl, but I wanted to play the title off the James Herriot story “Only One Woof” that if you haven’t read, you should. Yesterday was the Christmas program for the wolves out at Wolf Park, and thanks to a former intern who is now a volunteer, each and every group of wolves got a “tree.” She (with some help from her Dad) worked out a system if an easy stand that made use of branches trimmed from Christmas trees to create a “tree.” While the Junior Volunteers carried the load for the main pack, the rest of us did up trees for all the wolves in the retirement area and a real tree for the coyotes.
As things got started at Eastlake (the retirement section), a small group of us pre-positioned the trees at the enclosures so that things could move along. The wolves love this weather, the visitors, not so much. When we did this, my favorite wolf Echo (our oldest wolf) indicated her strong interest in the tree via some silent ru-ing and howling. She is silent, and has been since she came back to us, because of a condition that affects a number of older canids—vocal cord paralysis. I told her that it was coming, and then moved on to do other things.
Well, because she can’t really be seen by the public where she is, Echo got her tree last. I don’t know what caused me to put some extra cheese on the tree (a specific brand of cheese product most often used in dips), but I was glad I did. I was given the honor of taking in her tree (thank you P!), and when I picked it up, Echo looked at it and me, and howled. It was more than a ru, it was a howl. A real, honest-to-goodness reasonably loud howl. Sound. Sound from my silent lady.
Now, Echo is also a picky eater. She still isn’t sure that a lot of things really are food no matter what we and some of the other wolves say. Yet, she went into the tree with gusto, getting all the cheese product wrapped around limbs and taking it almost before she began to consider the summer sausage and other meats. She also seemed quite taken with the special little sausage I added, though it took her a while to track it down. I can say without a doubt that she liked her tree—a lot.
Me, I got something I never expected: A Christmas Howl. What a wonderful gift, from a special and wonderful wolf.
LW
