Of Animals II

"The conversation of Death

In the preceding section on hunting I merely touched on that moment of eye contact between wolf and prey, a moment which seemed to be visibly decisive. Here are hunting wolves doing many inexplicable things (to the human eye). They start to chase an animal and then turn and walk away. They sniff, and go on, ignoring them. They walk on the perimeter of caribou herds seemingly giving warning of their intent to kill. And the prey signals back. The moose trots toward them and the wolves leave. The pronghorn throws up his white rump as a sign to follow. A wounded cow stands up to be seen. And the prey behave strangely Caribou rarely use their antlers against the wolf. An ailing moose, who, as far as we know, could send wolves on their way simply by standing his ground, does what is most likely yo draw an attack, what he is least capable of carrying off: he runs.
I called this exchange in which the animals appear to lock eyes and make a decision the conversation of death. It is a ceremonial exchange, the flesh of the hunted in exchange for respect for its spirit. In this way both animals, not the predator alone, choose for the encounter to end in death. There is, at least, a sacred order in this. There is nobility. And it is something that happens only between the wolf and his major prey species. It produces, for the wolf, sacred meat.
Imagine a cow in the place of the moose or white-tailed deer. The conversation of death falters noticeable with domestic stock. They have had the conversation of death bred out of them; they do not know how to encounter wolves. A horse, for example - a large animal as capable as a moose of cracking a wolf`s ribs or splitting its head open with a kick - will usually panic and run.
What happens when a wolf wanders into a flock of sheep and kills twenty or thirty of them in apparent compulsion is perhaps not so much slaughter as a failure on the part of the sheep to communicate anything at all - resistance, mutual respect, appropriateness - to the wolf. The wolf has initiated a sacred ritual and met with ignorance.
This brings us to a second point. We are dealing with a different kind of death from the one men know. When the wolf "asks" for the life of another animal he is responding to something in that animal that says, "My life is strong. It is worth asking for." A moose may be biologically constrained to die because he is old or injured, but the choice is there. The death is not tragic. It has dignity.
... To illustrate, begin with a classic case that took place in Wood Buffalo National Park, Alberta, Canada, in 1951. Two buffalo bulls and two cows are lying in the grass ruminating. Three of them are in good health; one cow is lame. Woulves approach and withdraw a number of times, apparently put off by a human observer. At each approach, tough, the lame cow becomes agitated and begins looking all around. her three companions ignore the wolves. When one wolf comes within twenty-five feet, the lame cow gets up on shaking legs to face it alone. It seems clear that prey selection is something both animals play a role in."

(Barry Lopez, United States)