Maya killed another raven in the exhibit the other day. Of all the wolves, she is most likely to stalk and successfully kill birds or rodents. After the raven was killed, a group of ravens stayed in the trees and displayed intense calls towards the wolves. Maya continues to look up in trees and watch the sky whenever ravens appear.
In recent days, Shadow has been displaying increased dominance behaviors towards Malik, as can be seen in this week's photo. One of the ways that wolves communicate is through body posture, and in this photo, you can see that Shadow is giving Malik a direct stare which is a sign of dominance. Malik, a subordinate wolf, is averting Shadow's gaze. The ear positions are also worth noting, as Shadow's ears are pricked foreward with Malik's being towards the back, again another sign of dominance and submission. Malik's intimidation can also be seen in his raised hackles.
Malik is doing well, still starting issues with Maya, that Shadow immediately solves. During the feeding, Malik had possession of food and Maya came over to food beg. When he started growling and hard muzzle biting Maya, Shadow immediately came over to show posture his dominance in front of Malik. While Shadow was occupying Malik's attention, Maya took off with the meat. There was plenty of meat fed, so all wolves got their share. Lately, since the heat is likely to discourage the wolves from eating, wolf care staff have been "enhancing" the average beaver dinner. Staff put bacon in the beavers mouth, remove the stomach and intestines, and replace it with unusual treats (frozen cornish game hens, fish, pork sausage, etc) and inject the flesh of the beaver with beef broth. The wolves are extremely excited to investigate these upscale beaver, and readily eat. This allows them to consume food while it's fresh, rather than let the food gather flies in this heat. The trade-off is that they are very full on the day after the feeding and rarely come out of their den for daily programs.
Maya is doing very well, if you read Malik's log, you see that she's worked out a system for getting her share of food (and more)… During the last few weeks, wolf care staff have been using 4 10-week old dog puppies from Wintergreen Dogsled Adventures to enhance the Canine Cousins program. These puppies have really stimulated Maya to show maternal instincts. She whines to the puppies whenever she sees them enter the lab or come in for programs. When she get the oppotunity to raise puppies, we know she will be a great surrogate parent.
As Malik's photo notes, Shadow has again been reluctant to allow staff to deliver fly ointment. In the last few weeks, the biting flies are starting to be a problem, so alternatives are being investigated. He did allow staff to apply ointment on Sunday, by using bacon at the gate with a staff member holding the fly ointment behind. He only falls for this trick once… He also has been interested in the sled dog pups presence on site, he licked one of the puppies when it was brought to the edge of the fence. Both he and Maya will make good surrogate parents in 2008.
As you can see in this week's picture, Grizzer greets Malik with a T2 tail position. Even though he is submissive when greeting, he never loses a chance to chase Malik when a dominance issue occurs between the arctics. He was observed at the "What's for Dinner program" running along the enclosure, and playing in the pond with Shadow and Maya, After the program, he was sucessful in taking a deer leg that Maya was guarding.
Shadow has been a bit shy about approaching handlers the last few days. On Friday, we brought in a special treat for him, former wolf care staff member, Damon Haan. Damon is working at the USGS wolf research lab as a technician, and his visit to Shadow was well received. Wolves have great memories, and even though it was nearly a year since they saw Damon, all wolves remembered him.
Lucas is responding well to the Deramax pain killer. He is most active later in the day, and most stiff when staff arrive in the morning. Staff have been taking the time to walk him around the enclosure to work on muscle tone, but are cautious to not over stress him. As today's photos show, he still has an alert look, with clear eyes. Monitoring pain in wolves is more challenging than dogs as their tolerances seem to be so much higher. But, with Lucas, his discomfort is shown in his eyes, and the more staff observe, the more they can notice subtle changes in condition. The web cam seems to be malfunctioning in the Retired Enclosure, and tech support has been contacted. We hope to have this up and running soon.
Sorry for the delay in logs, as we always state, the first priority of all of our wolf care tasks is the task of caring for our wolves. As previous logs have shown, Lucas was having some difficulty with mobility and we were trying some painkillers, and he seemed to respond well, but as they wore off, he declined again. We were very cognitive of long-term use of painkillers and thinking that this was a response to the degenerative spine condition identified in an exam 2 – years ago, we tried to wean him of the pain killers after a week and replace them with steroids, with the intent that the anti-inflammatory would relieve the pain. Lucas did not respond to the transition, although he had individual days of improvement, his overall decline continued. Vital sign checks in the last few days of his life showed a strong heart, but a lowering body temperature. We placed straw in the den box to make him comfortable and give him an insulation effect. Our efforts in the last days were to spend time with him, make him comfortable and attempt to reduce his pain. Lucas's photo this week, shows the face of a wolf enjoying the attention. On the afternoon of July 11th, a status check of his temperature and an assessment of his mobility, as well as the look in his eyes, led us to make the decision that as managers, the most humane thing we could do, was to help ease his suffering. He held his head high, even as his legs gave out. He was surrounded by staff as first an injection of a standard immobilizer was given. He fell asleep in the straw bed in the corner of the exhibit, before he was carried to the adjacent vestibule, where he was euthanized. Board member, and friend of the wolf care program, Larry Anderson injected the final euthanasia dose, as staff members were inside the enclosure to distract Lakota and MacKenzie from the gate. After this week’s logs, Lucas will join a new pack, the Gone, but not Forgotten pack.
The following logs were written by Wolf Watch participants Kelly Miller and Jessica Sollie, who spent the night at the Center observing the Exhibit Pack's behavior. Enclosure enrichments were given to the wolves to stimulate their sensory ability. This week's enrichment with frozen fish. Grizzer looked for the fish for just a short while. He would usually just follow Maya around and wait for her to get the food and eat her scraps. He was very standoffish to those of us observing and had no interest coming to the fence. He would whine when Shadow was laying near the fence. He also did some scent rolling after a bit. The next morning when they were howling, we noticed that his howl is starting to change into a deeper adult voice.
The International Wolf Center advances the survival of wolf populations by teaching about wolves, their relationship to wildlands and the human role in their future.