The Time I Ran With the Wolves

Yesterday I went to Seacrest Wolf Preserve, which is an amazing place. It started out as a wolf rescue, then became a place that educates the public about wolves. They have gray wolves, Arctic wolves, and British Columbian wolves, all living in packs in large enclosures (the preserve has several hundred acres of land). The wolves are socialized to be friendly to humans. I got to help by playing with these six-month-old gray wolf cubs.

They look like full-grown wolves, but you can tell they are babies because they are so playful. They turned everything in their enclosure into a toy.

Including me! They weren't aggressive at all -- they let everyone pick them up and rub their bellies -- but they really wanted to play with my sweater. Here one of the volunteers is pulling the wolf off of me so I won't go home in tatters.

After I played with the puppies, I got to go inside the enclosures and walk with the wolf packs. It was eerie to hear the howling in the distance and see the wolves running toward us through the trees. The older wolves and the alphas kept their distance, but the younger wolves ran up and licked us. You aren't allowed to take digital pictures in the enclosures, so I'll post more pictures when my disposable camera is developed. But I did get this picture of two of the gray wolves. They were beautiful.

Then we visited the small animals, who also have large zoo-like enclosures, but who come out to interact with visitors. I petted this pair of Arctic foxes. They were incredibly soft.

I went inside the enclosure with the gray foxes and saw them get treats.

 I petted Billy the groundhog, a rescue animal who lives in the house of the couple who run the wildlife preserve.

Here he is sitting on his human friend's head. I'm pretty sure we could train my parents' groundhogs to do this.

I held several skunks, all rescues from a farm that bred them for their fur, all incredibly cute. It was an amazing day.