Wolf Juice

THE AIR FORCE transport was a twin-engined plane capable of carrying thirty passengers, but by the time all my “desiderata” were aboard there was barely room left for the crew and me. The pilot, an amiable flight lieutenant wearing a handlebar mustache, watched the load going aboard with honest bewilderment writ large across his brow. His only information about me was that I was some sort of Government man going on a special mission to the Arctic. His expression grew increasingly quizzical as we swung three great bundles of clanking wolf traps into the cabin, following these with the midsection of a collapsible canoe which looked like nothing so much as a bathtub without ends. True to Departmental precedent, the bow and stern sections of this canoe had been shipped to another biologist who was studying rattlesnakes in the south Saskatchewan desert.

My armament was loaded aboard next. It consisted of two rifles, a revolver complete with holster and cartridge belt, two shotguns, and a case of tear-gas grenades with which I was expected to persuade reluctant wolves to leave their dens so that they could be shot. There were also two large smoke generators prominently labeled DANGER, to be used for signaling to aircraft in case I got lost or—perhaps—in case the wolves closed in. A case of “wolf getters”—fiendish devices which fire a charge of potassium cyanide into the mouth of any animal which investigates them—completed my arsenal.

My scientific gear followed, including two five-gallon cans at the sight of which the pilot’s eyebrows shot right up under his cap. They were marked: 100% Grain Alcohol for the Preservation of Specimen Stomachs.

Tents, camp stoves, sleeping bags, and a bundle of seven axes (to this day I do not know why seven, for I was going to a treeless land where even one would have been superfluous), skis, snowshoes, dog harness, a radio transceiver and innumerable boxes and bales whose contents were as inscrutable to me as to the pilot, followed in due course.

When everything was in and securely roped down, the pilot, copilot and I crawled over the mass of gear and wedged ourselves into the cockpit. The pilot, having been thoroughly trained in the demands of military security, mastered his rampant curiosity as to the nature and purpose of my bizarre outfit and contented himself with the gloomy comment that he “doubted if the old crate could get airborne, with all that lot aboard.” Secretly I doubted it too, but although the plane rattled and groaned dismally, she managed to take off.

The flight north was long and uneventful, except that we lost one engine over James Bay and had to complete the journey at an altitude of five hundred feet through rather dense fog. This minor contretemps temporarily took the pilot’s mind off the problem of who and what I was; but once we had landed in Churchill he was unable to contain his curiosity any longer.

“I know it’s none of my damn’ business,” he began apologetically as we walked toward one of the hangars, “but for heaven’s sake, chum, what’s up?”

“Oh,” I replied cheerfully, “I’m going off to spend a year or two living with a bunch of wolves, that’s all.”

The pilot grimaced as if he were a small boy who had been justly rebuked for an impertinence.

“Sorry,” he mumbled contritely. “Never should have asked.”

That pilot was not the only one who was curious. When I began trying to make arrangements in Churchill for a commercial bush-plane to fly me on into the interior, my innocent explanation of my purpose, together with the honest admission that I hadn’t the slightest idea where, in the almost untraveled wilderness, I wanted to be set down, drew either hostile stares of disbelief or conspiratorial winks. However, I was not deliberately trying to be evasive; I was only trying to follow the operation order which had been laid down for me in Ottawa:

Para. 3

Sec. (C)

Subpara. (iii)

You will, immediately upon reaching Churchill, proceed by chartered air transport in a suitable direction for the requisite distance and thereupon establish a Base at a point where it has been ascertained there is an adequate wolf population and where conditions generally are optimal to the furtherance of your operations….

Although these instructions were firm in tone, they were rather lacking in specific direction, and I suppose it was only natural that half the population of Churchill should have concluded I was a member of a high-grade gang of gold-ore thieves attempting to make contact with my fellow conspirators; while the other half thought I was a prospector with knowledge of a secret mine somewhere in the vast interior Barrens. Later on, both these theories were discarded in favor of a vastly more intriguing one. When I eventually re-established contact with Churchill after many months of absence, it was to discover that the nature of my “real” mission had become public property: I had, so I then learned, actually spent the intervening months floating around the North Pole on an ice floe, keeping tabs on the activities of a crowd of Russians who were drifting about on their ice floe. My two cans of grain alcohol were believed to have been vodka, with which to loosen the tongues of the parched Russians in order to pry out their innermost secrets.

I became something of a hero after that story gained acceptance; but as I walked the bleak and snow-filled streets of Churchill shortly after my arrival there, trying to find a bush pilot to fly me to an unknown destination, I had not yet achieved hero status, and most of the people I spoke to were unhelpful.

After some delay I located the pilot of an ancient Fairchild ski-plane who made his precarious living flying Barren Land trappers to their remote cabins. When I put my problem to him he was roused to exasperation.

“Listen, Mac!” he cried. “Only nuts hire planes to go somewhere they don’t know where; and only nuts’d expect a guy to swallow a yarn about goin’ off to keep house with a bunch of wolves. You go find yourself another plane jockey, see? I’m too busy to play games.”

As it happened there were no other plane jockeys in the dismal shacktown of Churchill at that time, although, shortly before my arrival, there had been three. One of them had made a miscalculation while attempting to land on the pack ice of Hudson Bay in order to shoot a polar bear—and the bear had been the sole survivor of the attempt. The second was away in Winnipeg trying to float a loan with which to purchase a new plane after the wing of his previous aircraft had come unstuck during a takeoff. The third was, of course, the one who was too busy to play games.

Since I could not adhere strictly to my original orders, I did what I thought was the next best thing, and radioed Ottawa for new instructions. The reply came back promptly, six days later:

UNABLE UNDERSTAND YOUR DIFFICULTIES STOP YOUR INSTRUCTIONS ARE PERFECTLY CLEAR STOP IF CAREFULLY FOLLOWED NO DIFFICULTIES SHOULD DEVELOP STOP WHEN SENDING COMMERCIAL RADIO MESSAGES TO THIS DEPARTMENT YOU ARE INSTRUCTED TO RESTRICT YOURSELF TO MATTERS OF UTMOST IMPORTANCE AND UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES REPEAT UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD THESE MESSAGES BE LONGER THAN TEN WORDS STOP EXPECT INTERIM PROGRESS REPORT WITHIN TWO WEEKS BY WHICH TIME IT IS ANTICIPATED YOU SHOULD HAVE ESTABLISHED CLOSE CONTACT WITH CANIS LUPUS STOP RADIO MESSAGES AT DEPARTMENTAL EXPENSE SHOULD BE RESTRICTED TO TEN WORDS AND IMPORTANT MATTERS ONLY AND KEPT AS BRIEF AS POSSIBLE STOP WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVE ONLY HALF A CANOE STOP THE COST OF YOUR RADIOGRAM IS BEING DEBITED AGAINST YOUR SALARY

CHIEF PREDATION CONTROL DIVISION

There was clearly nothing for it but to await the problematical return of the pilot who had gone to Winnipeg. Meanwhile I stayed at the local hotel, a creaking barn through whose gaping walls a fine drift of snow used to whirl and settle on a windy day. There was no other kind of day in Churchill.

Nevertheless I was not idle. Churchill was then full of missionaries, prostitutes, mounted policemen, rum-runners, trappers, fur smugglers, ordinary fur traders and other interesting characters, all of whom, so it developed, were authorities on wolves. One by one I sought them out and studiously copied down what they had to tell me. From these sources I received some fascinating information, most of which had never previously been recorded in the scientific literature. I discovered that, although wolves reputedly devour several hundred people in the Arctic Zone every year, they will always refrain from attacking a pregnant Eskimo. (The missionary who provided me with this remarkable data was convinced that the wolfish antipathy toward pregnant flesh encouraged a high birthrate among the Eskimos and a consequent lamentable concern with reproductive rather than spiritual matters.) I was told that every four years wolves are subject to a peculiar disease which causes them to shed their entire skins—and during the period when they are running about naked they are so modest they will curl up in a ball if closely approached. The trappers whom I interviewed informed me that wolves were rapidly destroying the caribou herds; that each wolf killed thousands of caribou a year just out of blood-lust, while no trapper would think of shooting a caribou except under the most severe provocation. One of the working ladies of the settlement added the odd bit of information that since the establishment there of an American Air Base the wolf population had increased out of all bounds, and the only thing to do when bitten by one was to bite him right back.

Quite early in my inquiry I was asked by an old trapper if, since I was a wolf enthusiast, I would like some wolf-juice. I said I did not think I would relish the drink, but since I was a scientist and anything to do with wolves was grist to my mill, I was willing to have a go. The old man thereupon led me off to Churchill’s only beer parlor (a place I would normally have avoided) and introduced me to wolf-juice: a mixture which consisted of something called Moose Brand Beer liberally adulterated with antifreeze alcohol obtained from the soldiers at the Air Base.

Shortly after my baptism of wolf-juice I submitted my first progress report. It was in longhand and (perhaps fortunately for my continuing employment with the Department) proved completely indecipherable. No one in Ottawa could read a word of it; from which fact it was assumed that the report must be tremendously erudite. This report is, I believe, still on file with the Department, and is still consulted by Government specialists requiring expert data about wolves. As recently as last month I met a biologist who had seen it and who assured me that it was considered by many authorities to be the final word on Canis lupus.

Not only did I unearth many fascinating facts about wolves during my enforced stay in Churchill but I also made an independent discovery, possibly of even greater importance. I discovered that when the laboratory alcohol with which I had been supplied, was mixed sparingly with Moose Brand Beer a variety of wolf-juice resulted which was positively ambrosial. Thoughtfully I added fifteen cases of Moose Brand to my “desiderata.” I also purchased several gallons of formaldehyde—which, as any undertaker will confirm, is at least as good a preservative of dead animal tissue as is grain alcohol.