Wolves

Hi :) I thought I would explain my wolf rage :)

So, in the last five years or so they have re-introduced wolves to Idaho, and it's caused a lot of problems for ranchers and for the Elk population. I don't know if it would be too gross to explain it all, but the wolves a lot of times don't eat the whole animal, they just pull out the innards and leave the carcass. Sometimes they don't eat anything, they just kill it. It makes me angry because when I looked up the groups that were pushing all this re-population it was a bunch of people from the east coast. They talk about wolves like they're cute little puppy dogs. I do like wolves, they're really beautiful, but I don't want them in my backyard. Why don't those people puts wolves on their own land if they think they're so great??? Anyway, we went camping shortly after all this and it was before Tyler was born. I was really nervous once we got out there, because even though it was a campsite it was WAY up in the mountains and we were the only people around, I didn't see a single soul the whole way up. Idaho is very desolate like that, it's not like camping in California where there are people everywhere (safety in numbers sort of thing). So, I kind of worry about bears, and now I had the chance to worry about wolves too. Even when we were hiking around in the mountains with the kids, every gorgeous hill we walked over just looked like such rugged wilderness that I wanted to grab both my kids and run for it. But I tried to be rational and just focused on making lots of noise. I think I've read too many books on bears, but the same thing seemed to happen in every story I read, and that was that the bears were surprised by someone and didn't hear them coming. The same thing also happened to every person, and that was that they were almost mauled to death and THE ONLY THING that made the bears give up was when the person would totally go limp and play dead. Of course, they were so close to death that that was their last option. Anyway, sorry that's a tangent. That night in our little tent that I could probably rip with my fingernail, I woke up and heard howling, and it was definitely NOT coyote howling, I'm used to that. It was totally different. It completely freaked me out, and it didn't sound very far away. I spend the night listening as hard as I could, and trying to take cues from my dog outside. In the morning I talked to Joe (who was already outside the tent pacing around and staring at the ground for tracks) and he said he heard them too. I made the comment "well, at least Cooper (our dog) was here, maybe he kept them away" Joe looked at me like I might be joking and then said "Cooper would probably draw them in, and they would kill him in a few seconds." I was kind of ready to go after that. Then when we had packed everything up and were headed back out on the dirt road a forest service truck came down the road and the expression on his face really made me think we were idiots for camping there. He was very serious and his eyes did a quick scan of us and our truck and our surroundings, like he was trying to see if everything was okay before he then asked us if everything was okay. Joe talked to him and said that we had heard the wolves, and the ranger said that a wolf had been hit on the road only a couple miles from our camp spot and it was over 200 pounds. He was driving around to just do a check of the area and make sure everything was okay. We haven't been back there, and I think if we go again we'll make sure it's during 'peak' camp season when there will at least be one other person there, and we won't bring our dogs and we will bring our guns.

So there you have it :)