Wolves are Apparently the Bomb

Some newspaper articles make me go hmmmm - maybe not the story itself but the way it was written. There was one in today's Denver Post about the possibility that wolves have returned to Colorado. I didn't know this, but there are apparently have been no wolves in Colorado for 70 years or something.

I love the phrase "wolf advocate" used in the article. How would you like to be known as a wolf advocate? Do wolves need an advocate? I can imagine being handed a business card reading, JOHN B. LUNDQUIST, WOLF ADVOCATE.

The wolf advocates believe there are wolves in Colorado becuase they found "wolf scat" in northwestern Colorado. I love that the author took the time to call it scat. Not dung, not droppings, not excrement, but scat. What a great word - although it doesn't seem much different than the biologist saying, "Yeah, we found a pile of wolf crap and we're sending it to the lab." My only question is this: if you found a pile of feline poo, would you call it "cat scat"?

The line, "visitors flock to Yellowstone National Park to try to spot the animals" was a bit of a head scratcher for me. Maybe it's just me, but I never thought of wolves as being the primary attraction of Yellowstone. I thought it was the geological wonders, the scenery, or maybe the bears or buffalo. I've never heard anyone say, "Yeah, I'm taking two weeks vacation to head up to Wyoming. It's my lifelong dream to get a glimpse of a real wolf!"

I'll skip comment on the idea that there are labs that run DNA tests on wolf scat.

And then there was the part of the article that stated that there were 319 wolves in Wyoming. Is this true? Really? They have it down to the exact wolf? Will there be a separate 2010 census for the wolves? I can imagine Mr. and Mrs. Wolf getting the census form in their wolf mailbox, and they have to fill out how many wolves are in their wolfpack and their estimated annual number of kills. Is it 1-30? 31-50? 51-100? Or more than 100?

So I'm kind of weirded out. I never knew people were so into wolves. And I went to NC State University! You'd think I would understand about wolfpacks!