If he did skip a day, who knew what he might miss? The celebrated primate researcher Jane Goodall didn’t even have a college degree when she was assigned to watch chimpanzees in Tanzania, Rick liked to remind people, yet she was the first to record them using twigs as tools for fishing termites out of the ground, a discovery that upended the conventional understanding of primate intelligence. She had been in the field for months, much longer than any other observer, before she witnessed that startling behavior. And yet if you had approached her the day before she made that discovery and asked her if a chimp was smart enough to use a tool to get what it wanted, she would have said no.
It was all about showing up.
—
In the park, meanwhile, the wolves of the Lamar Valley were putting on a never-ending show that as many as thirty thousand visitors per year were witnessing. Guide services catering to wolf-watchers sprang up in Gardiner, near the northwest entrance, and cabins and motels near the park saw increased bookings even in the low seasons. Wolf tourism was booming. In 2003 the National Geographic channel aired Bob Landis’s documentary on the saga of 21 and 42. The film, which won an Emmy, was so popular that Landis eventually made two more about the pack. President Bill Clinton came to see the wolves, as did a string of celebrities, whom Doug Smith dutifully shepherded around the park, relying on Rick to make sure everyone got to see a wolf. Rick’s favorite such occasion was a visit from Cameron Diaz and the rapper DMX for an environmentally themed MTV show. DMX, who was raised in Yonkers, had trouble adjusting to the scale of Yellowstone. “I had no idea any of this was even here,” he marveled.
By then, wolf reintroduction was being called the greatest wildlife conservation success story of the last fifty years. The men and women who made it happen had become celebrated figures in the insular world of wildlife biology. Mike Phillips, the original project leader, had been hired away from the Park Service by Ted Turner to head the Turner Endangered Species Fund in Bozeman and was eventually elected to a seat in the Montana state legislature. Doug Smith, who succeeded Phillips as director, published a pair of books about the project and was in considerable demand as a speaker at conferences around the country. Perhaps the unlikeliest hero was Carter Niemeyer, who had come to admire the animals despite his decades-long career as a government trapper. His wolf-skinning story had become a treasured part of the lore of reintroduction, and he’d since gone on to become the head of Fish and Wildlife’s wolf office in Idaho.
As the years went by and Yellowstone wolf-watching became a full-blown phenomenon, Rick became something of a celebrated figure himself, with all the perks—and headaches—that appertained. Visitors interested in seeing wolves learned by word of mouth that their best course of action was to look for Rick’s yellow Nissan Xterra. He wasn’t hard to find: only one road transected the park’s Northern Range, where viewing was generally best and where he spent most of his time. “That’s the wolf guy,” people would whisper as they spotted him standing near his scope.
Rick never quite got used to being followed, but he grew resigned to the routine: if he so much as paused in a pullout or parking lot, it was just a matter of time before one car would stop, then another. Soon a dozen cars would be squeezing in. Like a grizzly or a bald eagle or any of the park’s traffic-jam-inspiring attractions, he had been sighted.
—
Once he began staying in Yellowstone year-round, Rick came to know the Druids’ homeland intimately. The pack routinely covered twenty miles in a day, and Rick learned to move with them, methodically making his way across the Lamar Valley until he’d located their signals. On the eastern end of the valley was massive Mount Norris, beyond which lay the park boundary and, farther still, Crandall. At the foot of Norris was a wide, flat alluvial plain, where the Lamar River dropped down from a high plateau in the park’s interior and was joined by a trout stream known as Soda Butte Creek, tumbling in from the northeast. Druid Peak, the mountain for which the pack was named, overlooked the confluence of the two streams from the north side of the valley. Moving downstream, the river flowed through a classic U-shaped glacial valley, dotted here and there with boulders and small ponds left behind by the retreating ice. Heavily wooded Specimen Ridge, named for the abundance of petrified wood found on its flanks, stretched along the entire southern side of the valley. The ridge dropped down toward the river in a series of broad grassy benches—the largest of which, called Jasper Bench, was a favorite hunting ground for the Druids. A series of more or less treeless ridges formed the opposite side of the valley, which narrowed at its western end to a modest gorge, known as Lamar Canyon, before opening back up again as the river flowed through Little America. About halfway down the valley’s length on the northern side was a small cluster of buildings known as Buffalo Ranch, which included a ranger station and a classroom where wildlife classes were taught. All this was Druid country.
Rick grew accustomed to the natural rhythms of the wolves’ existence. Winter was a time for roaming, as the Druids patrolled the full width and breadth of their territory, scent-marking the borders with urine and following the various elk herds that didn’t migrate out of the park. The pack was at its most cohesive in these months, traveling and hunting together as a group. In the spring, 21 and 42 became inseparable, and Rick learned to watch for the telltale signs of another litter on the way. 42 would begin visiting the pack’s den in a thickly wooded dale on a shoulder of Druid Peak, preparing it for an extended stay. In early summer would come the first sightings of the pups, and the excitement of counting how many had been born and the parsing of coat color and gender, so difficult to determine through a spotting scope.
Around midsummer the alphas would move the family from the mountain down onto a favorite spot on the valley floor. It was at the base of Specimen Ridge, about a mile south of the river, where a minor creek came down amid a large fan of boulders and other detritus, evidence of what was once a larger watercourse. Such gathering points, known as rendezvous sites, are typically used by packs whose pups have grown large enough to leave the den area but not yet quite sturdy enough for the endless roaming that comes with winter. With secrecy no longer quite so essential to the pups’ survival, the alphas usually choose a more open area with better access to prey.
Watching the Druid alphas move their pups from the den to the rendezvous became a favorite summertime ritual for wolf-watchers, who took advantage of a parking lot near the base of the mountain to observe the action. Since the den was on the north side of the park road, and the rendezvous site was on the south, the journey included a highly visible crossing of the blacktop—usually the pups’ first—which in turn meant that everyone was able to get a close look at the youngsters for the first time.
Though the annual relocation was a distance of only perhaps two and a half miles, it was a major undertaking. Besides the road, the pups also had to cross Soda Butte Creek. Especially if the previous winter’s snowpack had been high, the creek could be dangerously deep and fast-moving. Getting across alive was a rite of passage for every Druid pup and a moment of high drama for the watchers, complete with cheers every time a drenched youngster dragged himself up, spooked and bedraggled, onto the far bank.
By the fall, the pups were almost as big as the adults and beginning to accompany them on short hunting excursions, until winter came and the pack was free to roam en masse once more. The composition of the pack was constantly in flux. Pups became yearlings; yearlings became adults and wandered off to seek their fate, some to eventually return, others never to be seen again. The one constant was 21 and 42. Rick never tired of watching the alpha pair, especially 21, who was unlike any wolf he had ever seen.
Even before 21 left his natal pack, Rick had known he was unusual. One morning in the spring of 1997, two years after Doug Smith and Carter Niemeyer rescued 21 following the death of his father, Rick watched the handsome young wolf returning from a hunt. With him was the big male who had become the pack’s new alpha when 21 was still a tiny pup. T
he pair had killed an elk, and 21, already an outstanding provider, had brought a massive piece of meat back to the den, where a new litter of pups had been born.
The pups, his new brothers and sisters, showered him with affection, but 21 seemed tense, pacing back and forth across Rick’s scope. Finally the wolf found what he was looking for: a troubled pup that he had recently taken an interest in. There was usually one pup who held the lowest rank in a litter’s pecking order, but this pup was different; he had some physical problem that held him back. Rick couldn’t tell exactly what was wrong with him, though his littermates clearly recognized that he was different and shunned him. But 21 seemed to have empathy for the pup, the way a dog seems to know when his owner is feeling depressed or lonely. As Rick looked on, the strapping 21 played with the tiny wolf as though he were still a pup himself, giving him the attention he so seldom enjoyed from his siblings.
This capacity for empathy was one of the qualities Rick loved most about wolves. As a pup, 21 had been reared by a father who was unrelated to him but still felt compelled to provide for him and his siblings; in turn, 21 found himself caring for pups who were not his own when he stepped into 38’s place as the leader of the Druids. It was very unusual in the animal world, except among canines (and humans). Wolves had an evolutionary imperative to become attuned to the emotions of others because they lived in packs, where cooperation—for hunting, for protection from rivals—was paramount. Sociability enhanced the chances for survival.
Over years of watching wolves, Rick had become convinced that empathy was the single most important trait that an alpha could have, and 21’s capacity for it continued to amaze him. After 21 became the leader of the Druids, Rick watched him win many territorial battles—he’d once fought off five intruders single-handedly—but he’d never seen him actually kill a wolf. His mate was the same way. Unlike that of the sister she had helped depose, 42’s rule was a benevolent one.
In 2002 the enormous pack split apart, with the various factions forming at least three new packs in areas south and west of the Lamar Valley, while 21 and 42 maintained control of their original territory. Alpha wolves with Druid lineage were now spread throughout the Northern Range, including the female who would eventually lead the Agate Creek Pack and give birth to O-Six. To Rick, the Druids were like the Kennedys, American royalty.
—
By the end of the first decade after reintroduction, dispersing wolves were showing up in far-flung wilderness areas where they hadn’t been seen in generations, making headlines on a regular basis. The project even had its first celebrity wolf, a Druid whose remarkable ramblings were reported in newspapers nationwide. He was part of the enormous brood of twenty-one pups that enthralled watchers in the spring of 2000. Although his official collar number was 253, everyone called him Limpy, thanks to an injury to his left hind leg he’d sustained as a puppy. Even with his bad leg, he thrived, growing up to become a barrel-chested black wolf with a dark mask across his eyes and a distinctive hopping gait that made him instantly recognizable through a scope and endeared him to watchers.
Had any misfortune befallen his father, 21, Limpy would have been a likely candidate to replace him as alpha male. But 21’s reign never faltered, and that meant Limpy had to leave the Lamar Valley to have a chance to establish his own pack. In mid-October 2002, Rick noticed that Limpy’s signal hadn’t been detected for several days running. He had finally made his move.
Six weeks later a coyote trapper checking his snares in the hills outside a town in Utah found he’d caught something far too large to be a coyote. There hadn’t been a confirmed wolf sighting in the state in over seventy years, but the trapper knew one when he saw one, even if the rancher he was working for initially didn’t believe him. The wolf he’d caught was still alive and wearing a research collar. Word quickly reached Yellowstone: Limpy had been found—almost three hundred miles from the Lamar Valley.
Rather than carry him all the way back to Yellowstone, officials with the Fish and Wildlife Service decided to release him in Grand Teton National Park, about 125 miles north of where he was captured. A few packs had already been established in Grand Teton by dispersing Yellowstone wolves, but it still offered plenty of opportunities for an ambitious young wolf looking for his own territory. Limpy, however, had his own agenda. Eleven days after he was dropped off in the far northern end of the park, his signal was picked up east of Yellowstone Lake, some forty miles away. He was headed home. On December 20, Limpy was back with his clan in the Lamar Valley. In a little over two months, he had completed a remarkable round-trip of more than a thousand miles.
It was the kind of story newspaper editors loved, and Limpy’s homecoming saga was reported far and wide. But he didn’t stay in the park for long. He spent the next few years roaming southwestern Wyoming, until researchers eventually lost track of him.
Rick thought of Limpy often over the years and told his story to countless park visitors. It was fun to imagine him out there, somewhere in the West, following his nose wherever it might lead him. It was still a world hostile to wolves—over the years the project had lost so many to poachers, to traffic, to ranchers protecting livestock—but Limpy seemed blessed.
—
42’s tenure as the matriarch of the world’s most celebrated pack ended on February 1, 2004. She was killed on top of Specimen Ridge by invading wolves from the same pack the Druids had driven out of the Lamar Valley eight years before, when she was just a pup. Now known as the Mollies Pack, the wolves had flourished after their exile to the park’s interior, though they made periodic forays north when the snows got too deep and the game too scarce in their home territory. This time they had caught 42 wandering alone. At nearly nine years of age, she was no match for them. She’d been the last of the park’s remaining Canadian-born wolves. Her death, if not peaceful, had at least been a natural one, and for that Rick was grateful.
In the weeks that followed, he watched as 21 roamed the valley, howling for his missing mate. He had become an old wolf, his black coat gone almost completely silver with age. He found another mate that spring, a young female in the pack who was unrelated to him, and sired one last litter. One day in June, Rick watched as 21 lounged in the pack’s summer rendezvous, surrounded by several generations of his offspring. Suddenly a bull elk appeared in the meadow, and a number of the younger wolves leaped up to give chase. The old male stood, too, but declined to join the pursuit.
It was the last time Rick saw 21 alive. Over the next few weeks, he searched in vain for him as the Druids moved through the valley. Old alphas sometimes wandered off when they were no longer up to the task, ceding their duties to younger males. The battery in 21’s collar had died long ago, however, so there was no way to know where he’d gone. Then, one afternoon in July, an outfitter who guided horseback tours in the valley turned in a radio collar to park rangers. He’d found a dead wolf high up on Specimen Ridge, he said. The collar was old and worn, but the serial number on the inside confirmed it had belonged to 21.
The next morning Rick and Doug Smith set out on horseback up the Specimen Ridge trail to retrieve his body. Following the outfitter’s directions, they found him lying under a copse of pines, not far from a tree that he and his longtime mate had scent-marked hundreds of times together over the years. There he was, the wolf who had begun the Druid story. It was the first time Rick had ever actually touched 21’s fur or seen him at such close range.
Rick mourned 21’s death for a long time. In the years he’d watched the wolf, he felt he’d learned everything there was to know about him—his quirks, his moods, his strengths and weaknesses. He could guess what 21 would do before he did it. Rick liked to tell visitors that “21 never lost a fight, and he never killed a vanquished rival.” In fact, Rick sometimes called him “Superman,” because he’d always felt that 21, of all the wolves he’d known, had the perfect blend of valor and nobility. He hung a poster-size print of the enormous silver male on the wall above his writing desk in
his cabin. Captured at full sprint, he appeared to be flying.
3
A STAR IS BORN
O-Six had been howling for days, and at last it had paid off. Atop a partially forested knoll on the western edge of Little America, she stood nose to nose with two young black wolves, a pair of roaming brothers who had only recently made a tentative stab at joining the ranks of the Druids. They were both yearlings, though one was noticeably larger, already over a hundred pounds, with room on his lanky frame for more if he continued to eat well. The bigger brother had a salt-and-pepper muzzle and a white blaze on his breast shaped like a cross. He was acutely interested in O-Six, sniffing her as she stood still, tail held high, and allowed herself to be inspected.
But it was the smaller of the brothers who was clearly in charge, and he was the one O-Six wanted. This wolf’s jaw was stippled with gray, as were his withers and chest, making him look older and more weathered than his brother, though in reality neither had much experience being away from their natal pack. His eyes were a light tan color, almost yellow.
As he stood motionless, transfixed by the female in front of him, the jilted brother approached his sibling at a crawl, first reaching up to lick at his chin, then turning on his back in the snow to gently paw at his face. He looked like an overgrown pup, which wasn’t far from the truth. O-Six laid her chin across the smaller brother’s back. The three of them lingered there on the hilltop under a cobalt-blue sky, three interlopers far from home, and considered one another.
American Wolf Page 5