Humaneness associated with foothold traps, (the wolf's paw bleeds) leaves unethical capture to incur injury to feet, legs, teeth, and psyche during struggles to escape. Radiographs and necropsies of injuries from targeted individuals caught in traps, while others' spirits are killed in depredation control efforts.
Evil, traps the wary wolf, poisons the cunning arctic fox, and shoots the polar bear. The dramatic tales of corrupt detractors outnumber the tales of the renegade wolves, but perhaps the prize tale of all is Sweetwater's Run: In the Spirit of Nome's Great Race of Mercy by lesbian author Sage Sweetwater. There are no sheep or cattle to fall victim to the poison bait in the harsh Arctic, no sheep dogs to eat it and slowly crawl away to their deaths, only the two-legged blackmailers, cheaters, dirty dealers, seal beaters and poachers going for free lunch counters which convert to death stands for them. A feeding station just the size to feed a dirty mouth, taking the bait, a fatal mistake.
What can be said about predation? It has been clouding human thought for centuries. The mention of serious literature, such as Sweetwater's Run: In the Spirit of Nome's Great Race of Mercy prevents the dismissal of the blood of the wolf's paw and devices of capture. Steel traps are devices, when triggered, cause a set of jaws to spring around the wolf's foot and holds it firmly. These traps are buried lightly near natural or artificial scent posts, around carcasses of larger animals, on wolf trails, and in baited holes with wolf urine or strong scents concocted from carefully guarded formulas of muskrat glands, beaver castor glands, wolf urine, skunk musk, oil of rotten fish, and tainted brains.
All living things are faced with elements which make its life more difficult. Fierceness, belief, and other positive combinations can overcome it. The wolf is no exception. Where blackmailers, cheaters, dirty dealers, seal beaters and poachers interfere with the natural course of life's events, exert an extra drag on the wolf's life, and sometimes resulting in death. The wolf isn't given to self-sabotage. Defense is necessary and they never forget about what they are defending. Although they are not invincible, they run the trail of informed choices, but sometimes they can't outrun the cross-hairs of aerial hunting or outstep a trap because of the lure of food to a hungry wolf. Knowledge protects, ignorance endangers.
That famous warm lobo wolf, cautious of every trap that fails to hold her. She is entitled, because of her strong intellectual nature and her wolf psychology that lets her hold her own for so long, and against such overwhelming odds.
Copyright Ms Sage Sweetwater, Celebrity firebrand lesbian novelist