Trapping A Menace

There are people for whom the wolf represents a mystique that they admire, a wild creature that is feared and admired, a hunter and a ferocious threat to those for whom it represents both a challenge and a danger. Those people believe that it would represent the pinnacle of the binary dog-master relationship to be in possession of a hybrid, a wolf bred with a dog to produce a wolf-dog.

Interbreeding produces a biological amalgam, and it is likely that the genetic inheritance will always be weighted heavily in favour of the wolf genes over that of the long-domesticated canine genes. Experts in animal behaviour likely warn that the wild animal in the hybrid can suddenly surface, surprising the wolf-dog owner who might feel it to have been suppressed to the point of firm control.

Someone who prided themselves on owning a wolf-dog suddenly realizes they can no longer control or predict the animal's behaviour, that it presents as a danger to them and anyone else in its proximity because of its unpredictability and its inbred instincts that become dominant over those of the more submissive canine.

Ferry operators recount how frequently they see people coming along to Bowen Island, B.C., with a large companion-dog, and then seeing only the people, sans 'dog', on the return trip. It would appear that Bowen Island has been a depository for people abandoning animals they realize they can no longer control.

And it was just one such animal that recently presented as a threat to livestock and to domestic pets and potentially to young children, on the island. The presumed wolf-dog had been sharpening its skills by hunting and killing dozens of cats and dogs and geese. The forests on the island were littered with deer carcasses. There was more than just survival involved; it became sport as well.

The Bowen Island municipality was desperate to deal with this growing problem. A local veterinarian had become personally involved, acquiring a high-powered tranquilizer rifle, and attempting to hunt the animal for months, but without success. The initial thrust was to trap the animal, not kill it, but as it continued its predatory killing spree the resolve was made to destroy it.

Which was precisely what a trapper who was hired by the municipality did. He waited patiently nearby an area on a farm where the predator had killed sheep earlier in the week on the premise that it would return to the scene of its earlier success. When it did, the hunter dispatched the 90-pound animal with a shot to the head.

A lot of concern, tribulations and trouble, let alone the grief given to pet and livestock owners might have been averted but for the stupidity and conceit of people who fantasize a relationship with a creature they cannot, in the end, cope with.