Guest Post: Living with wolves

Readers of Wild Muse know that I am fascinated by wolf ecology, and I often post on wolf research. A little while ago, I wrote up a review on the best kinds of livestock guarding dogs based on the writing and research of Cat Urbigkit. A reader named Jennifer commented on the post, referring to a run in her dogs had with wolves a few weeks back. I emailed Jennifer for more information and then extended an invite for her to share her story here on Wild Muse. She accepted, and I thank her for her time in writing up the events. I hope readers will appreciate the opportunity to share her experiences. For me, it is always fun to pontificate upon ecology in the abstract; but for some, it can get deeply personal.  - DeLene

I live on a remote island between the mainland of British Columbia and the central part of Vancouver Island. My family of six has been here for eight years now. We own over 30 acres and are surrounded by crown land that stretches for miles beyond that. It’s wild and beautiful and a great place to raise children.

In the first year that we were here however, we lost a dog right off our front porch to a cougar. It was a very traumatizing situation mostly for myself, as she was my best bud who came everywhere with me.  It was a big wake up call for us all, as it could very well have been one of our children. We had been told by many residents in the area that it was only a matter of time before we saw or had an interaction with a cougar as they are fairly common and prevalent here. I suffered post traumatic stress and depression after the death of my dog and had irrational fears of going outside and cougars breaking into our house. It was quite debilitating for me.

Several months later my husband brought home two rottweiler black lab cross puppies, males from the same litter. They were 12 weeks old. The pain from the loss of my previous dog was still fresh but my husband felt it important to have two dogs for the safety of the family. My husband grew up on a farm and always had working dogs that lived outdoors and had specific jobs, whereas I always had dogs that were inside dogs and more or less pampered pets when I was growing up. I had fears that the same fate would meet these new dogs and a cougar would take them down. I was very apprehensive. But in the end, I realized I needed these dogs to help me heal and get past my fears.

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Stinkers the Porcupine

I found this YouTube video of a domesticated porcupine on Twitter yesterday:

It flashed me back to a backpacking trip in Jasper National Park in Canada summer of 2008. Matt and I inadvertently set our tent up on a lightly used animal trail, and we learned the hard way to *always* search your camp area for any sign of an animal trail and avoid pitching your tent near it. And especially not on it.  A few hours after sundown, we were awoken to a weird huffing sound. Startled, I counted the huffs and realized that they always came in sets of 3, 5 or 7, always an odd count. It also sounded as if the animal was near to the ground or had a low center of gravity. It seemed to wander off, after three or four huffing sessions right outside our tent fly.

We drifted back to sleep. We’d been on the road for three weeks, driving from Portland, Oregon to Alaska, then back down to Jasper. We were going to drive all the way east to Ottawa, then back down south to North Carolina. And we were camping almost the entire way. (I think we spent four nights in hotel out of four weeks on the road.) In Alaska, we’d become hyper sensitive to being on the lookout for brown bears. The morning before we went to Denali, we awoke in a campground where we’d pitched our tent the night before in the dark. I realized somberly that we’d pitched our tent literally in a patch of blueberries and soapberries. While it was nice to have blueberries in our oatmeal, I couldn’t help but to feel sketchy because soapberries are a bear’s favorite summer food, according to a few rangers we’d met. So we’d become attuned to worrying about animal activity at night, especially since we were often the only tent-campers at most of the campgrounds we checked into. Everyone else was in bear-proof tin-can RVs.

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Tiny little red wolves

Red wolf puppies, about two weeks old, in a shallow den located within Alligator River Wildlife Refuge, N.C. Two of these four are 'foster' puppies that were just placed within the den. (© 2010 DeLene Beeland)

The red wolf is one of the rarest mammals in North America, only about 80 live in the wild on the Albemarle peninsula which juts into the Atlantic Ocean from North Carolina’s shore. And right now is puppy season.  Female red wolves give birth to litters as small as one or two, or as large as 10, in April. And that’s when work gets really busy for the red wolf recovery program biologists. About 50 were born this year, and the Red Wolf Recovery Program staff are still in the process of finding all the dens and documenting the litters. I spent today shadowing several program biologists in the field, and it was a very special day. Sometimes, the program slips extra red wolf puppies into a mother’s den. They get the extra puppies from captive-breeding facilities that are contributing to the species continued existence on earth. And yes, red wolves they take from captivity and foster into a wild den are pure red wolves.

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Coywolf encounter in Connecticut?

Eastern coyote, possible coywof, seen in a backyard in Connecticut. © 2009 Janet DeMaio, published with permission

After writing a post about coywolf research, I received an email from a citizen in Connecticut whose daughter had spotted an animal in her yard that they suspected was different than a normal run-of-the-mill coyote. I asked her to write about her encounter, and told her I’d post her story on Wild Muse. The email said her animal encounter took place “about 40 miles from the MA border, in Wallingford, CT.”  Janet also included two photos, published here.

Here is Janet DeMaio’s story:

It was the morning of Nov. 6, 2009 and we were getting ready for work and school. We live in a home that has about 2 acres of land, the backyard faces a wooded area that leads to Mt. Biesek behind our house. Since we have lived here we have seen deer daily, coyotes, wild turkeys and even a copperhead now and then. However, on Nov. 6th it was 6:30 A.M. and as my daughters were getting ready to go to the bus stop my husband noticed an animal sitting in the backyard facing the woods.

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Birding break

Male American redstart

Yesterday morning, I slipped away from work with a friend and took a stroll in an urban wooded area. My friend is a much savvier birder than am I. While I enjoy watching the birds that come to a seed feeder outside my home, my friend actually knows where to go and at what time of year to see specific birds and migration events. I was at the Univ. of Florida for work, and so we went to Lake Alice,

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Unlucky sea ducks: stranded shorebirds

Surf scoter (Melanitta perspicillata)

Shorebirds are showing up along a 25-mile stretch of beach on the Washington peninsula and are becoming stranded. Mostly scoters, many of the birds are dying and Olympic National Park rangers and wildlife officials do not why. I stumbled across this worrisome wildlife health issue, literally, last Sunday night (Sept. 13). We were driving south along the peninsula on Highway 101 and decided to stop for the night at Kalaloch campground, located on a bluff overlooking a sulky patch of Pacific Ocean.

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My half-blind house finch

Female house finch. © Bill Raboin

My backyard wildlife encounters have increased since we installed a Yankee Whipper bird seed feeder on our back deck. In addition to spying on the numerous winged creatures it attracts, I’ve had to deal with the messy aftermath of several fatal and non-fatal bird strikes on our house windows. But last night, we had a different type of wildlife encounter.

A house guest was watching the evening jubilee at the feeder, and she noticed one bird was slightly different. It didn’t seem as aware of its neighbors on the curved perches. It moved tentatively, carefully. She watched it closer. It’s eyes looked odd. She came and got me inside saying, “Did you know you have a blind sparrow out there?” We slid the slider door open and all the birds scattered, as they always do.  Except for this one.

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Urban bird strikes

Female house finch

Mornings are typically a time for me to quaff hot coffee while staring out the sliding glass doors to my back deck, where a seed feeder attracts house finches, Carolina wrens, Carolina chickadees, tufted-titmice, American goldfinches and migratory drop-ins like rose-breasted grosbeaks. But on this Tuesday, something went awry. I was in the kitchen when a crack to the glass sent adrenaline shooting through my core. I was at the slider within seconds and saw her there… on her back, beak moving repeatedly but emitting no sound, legs clawing at the air.

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