Wolves and Possums

This fellow is not a "blank-slate". And neither am I! We both my have to "learn", if that is possible at our ages.

Here’s a picture of Shadow, my new “wolf”, whom I’m “fostering” (can you say “Foster Fail”?), sleeping outside on the ramp to my porch with his new friend Mr. Possum¹.

Figure. 1. Shadow (I call him that because he just follows me around all day, and plops down and sleeps next to me wherever I go. Can you say “Separation Anxiety”²? Perhaps I should have named him Rugsy) sleeping outside on the ramp to my porch with his new friend Mr. Possum. The previous night I left Shadow outside (he didn’t want to come in, and you really can’t make this perhaps 120 pound animal do anything he doesn’t want to do) and he howled for hours (says my neighbor), and I eventually woke up and let him in. So, I didn’t want to leave him outside again the next night, and it was quite the struggle to get this animal into my house, away from his new friend, Mr. Possum!

In the past I’ve always adopted my canine companions as 8-week-old puppies (blank-slates), before the “Fear/Avoidance” programming stage, so I could fuck them up and not have to inherit someone else’s fuck-up. Can you imagine this? An, I think, elderly wolf who:

• Doesn’t know what Dog Food is (i.e., he need 2 - 2 1/2 pounds of raw meat everyday) — I should set up a “Go-Fund-Me”!

• Still has his testicles (must have been used for breeding); and

• Doesn’t know what a tennis ball is ????

• And he doesn’t know PLAIN ENGLISH³!

Shadow would be (I’m just “fostering” him) my third wolf — I’m waiting to get the Embark results back on his “wolfiness”⁴.

I got tricked into fostering him by the local Humane Society and the County Animal Control officer⁵. His howling might be pretty bad, but I’ll bet I and my neighbors won’t be hearing the coyote yelps and howling as much!

And, if you are at least somewhat entertained, and want to continue reading, next I’ll tell you another story about a “wolf” and a possum. First a picture of my beloved Nashoba:

Figure 2. Picture of Kir with my 2nd wolf Nashoba on my back deck in IN.

Wolfie, my first wolf, when I was living in MI, I thought had killed a possum. I yelled at him and told him that he was a BAD BOY and put him into the house.

The Possum I put into a garbage bag, and that bag into the garage to deposit into the dumpster at work the next day.

Well, when I woke up the next morning, I saw the garbage bag had been eaten through, as had been a bag of dog food I had in the garage.

I found the Possum in the bottom of one of my garbage pails in the state of “food coma”. I took that garbage pail, with the Possum, and deposited the Possum into the hedgerow along my house.

So, does “Playing Possum” work ? Like, DUH! You get carried into a nice safe place, get all the dog food you can eat, and the next day you get carried out to sleep it off.

1. Want to foster a possum? If those poor possums would only get some good orthodontist work, and replace their rat tails with nice furry tails ...

2. The first (and last) time I tried to leave Shadow in the house because I needed to go into town, he ripped the wood trim off the front door, and everything on every piece of furniture next to a window (e.g., broken lamps on the floor), and everything on the window sills was on the floor.

3. Well, did you know that there are also some people in Europe (not to mention MX) who also don’t understand Plain English? Even if spoken VERY LOUDLY ?!

4. I don’t really trust this Embark DNA testing. For example, my previous wolf, Nashoba, who died of old age (OK, I shot him after he hadn’t moved, eaten, or drunk water for 3 days, and I hope someone would do the same for me if I don’t do it first) see:

Embark “Embarked” Nashoba as follows (he was a male, so they could distinguish both his father and mother’s haploids — don’t think you can do that with a female dog):

Father’s Haploid: “Lineage (Haplogroup B1) that is found infrequently in dogs and may only be found in gray wolves …”

Mother’s Haploid: “Unlike other lineages A2 never quite went global, probably because it did not have the opportunity to hitch its wagon to European colonialism - or because these dogs just prefer hanging out in mountains, tundra, islands, and other hard to find places.”

His mother, to me, sounds like the quintessential wolf, but Embark doesn’t think so. Wolves, before being almost exterminated by man, spanned more of the globe than even humans today. Embark, I think, is a bit “insular”, thinking a “wolf” is a wild dog living in North America.

I have my own definitions of what a wolf is:

1. A dog who’s breeding and DNA has not been fucked with my humans, i.e., a dog being what he wants to be; and

2. A dog who lives in dog-civilization, not in human civilization. By this definition, I don’t have, and never have had, a wolf-companion, only a dog companion.

When I studied biology, I was told that a species was a group that could only interbreed amongst themselves and have viable offspring. And they tell us there are at least 3 species of canines:

• Canis lupis (the grey wolf);

• Canis rufus (the red wolf, perhaps “extinct”); and

• Canis familiaris (the “dog”).

But all these “species” can, and do, interbreed, as can dingos and coyotes. So are they really different species?

For a very fascinating discussion about what is a dog or a wolf, I highly recommend the writings and videos of Ray Cooper regarding “The evolution of dogs”.

5. And this was the day after I got back from MX. I hadn’t unpacked, and hadn’t dealt with other issues such as my plumbing (I left all the heat off in my house while I was gone).