Wolves!

So as I mentioned in my last post, I went to see a wolf show on Saturday. It was awesome! It was a group called "Mission: Wolf" and it's a husband and wife who own a wolf rescue in Colorado who travel around showing wolves to the public to educate people about wolves and about how the idea that people have of wolves as vicious is a misconception. This event was one of our Saturday service options, so a bunch of us from AmeriCorps were there to volunteer. We helped set up a little bit at the beginning and then I checked tickets as people came in the door. Since I was still working when the show started I missed some of it, but the man, Kent I think was his name, started by giving a lot of background information about wolves and wolf behavior, and talked about how his wolf rescue came to be. The wolves he takes care of mostly come from people who decided to try to keep a wolf as a pet, or from movie studios who use them in movies and then don't want them anymore.

After that came the best part, when the wolves actually came out. It was so cool when they walked into the room, everyone was transfixed. And they were definitely not scary, they looked a lot like dogs and they were even not as big as I expected. The really great part of the show was that we actually got to touch the wolves! Apparently Massaschusetts has a stupid law that says that the public cannot interact directly with wild animals so the wolves weren't allowed to go up to audience members to say hi, but luckily for us in AmeriCorps, we got to be special "greeters" for the wolves, which meant that we sat on the floor in front of the audience and the handlers brought the wolves around to us. Kent told us the correct way to greet the wolf, which is bring your hand up from underneath them, not on top of their head, and scratch their chin, and look the wolf in the eye and the wolf will usually touch it's nose to yours. Apparently if you don't keep your eyes open the wolf will get upset because it thinks you don't like it or you're being rude. The first wolf who came around to us was named Abe, and he was actually a wolf-dog mix so he looked pretty much like a husky. When he came up to me I scratched his chin and he started sniffing my face, and then he licked me right on the mouth! It was so cool, and I can now say I've been licked by a wolf. :) A few people go really kissed by the wolves and got their whole faces licked. The second one who came around was a 2-year-old named Zeb, and he seemed to like to sniff people's laps. I had my phone in my lap to take pictures and he reached down and tried to take my phone. I had to reach out and take it out of his mouth haha. Which also goes to show how gentle wolves are with people that he let me do that. The third wolf was name Magpie, and she was the alpha female of the pack. She was a little bit tired, she had been sleeping right before the handler got her to walk around, so she was more reserved when she walked around to us, but it was still awesome to be so close to a real live wolf.

So without further ado, here are some pictures:

Magpie (or Maggie), the alpha female, rolling around on the floor when she first came in the room. 

Maggie on the floor still, Zeb is the one standing behind the woman.

Maggie and Zeb sitting while Abe makes the rounds

Abe greeting people

Maggie greeting people

The boys, Abe and Zeb

Close up of Zeb as he walked by. This is the only close up picture that I got because I wanted to be able to pet them while they were close to me. 

So that's wolf show pictures! It was a great experience and it made me want to go visit the rescue in Colorado. He invites anyone who wants to to come visit the wolves there and I think that would be awesome! At the end of the show he tried to get the wolves to howl, but since they were tired it was only a little half-hearted howl, and it would be amazing to hear many wolves howling all at once which he said happens all the time at the place where the wolves live. Maybe I'll have a chance to go there sometime. I certainly hope so.

Today we had a group project in Chatham which was working on a conservation land that needed some tending to so we were doing things like clearing trails, removing invasives, and moving brush that we collected. It was a long day but it was good, hard work that makes it feel like you really accomplished something. Then after dinner a bunch of us went to play volleyball at the local elementary school, which maybe I mentioned before but I don't think so. One of my housemates started a league for us to play, and this time we actually had enough people to play 6-on-6 unlike last week. We also had someone from the community come play with us, since the league is now being advertised as a community event, so that was fun. His name was Bud and he was actually really good at volleyball unlike most of us haha. I think I might be getting a little bit better, so hopefully that trend will improve. We also played dodgeball after volleyball. It was the first time I'd ever played and it was really fun, but it was a lot more tiring than I expected. I'm going to try to go every week so I can get better at both games.

Well I guess that's it for now. I'll post again whenever I have something exciting to write about.