Guess What I Saw?

When I was younger, whenever my family was driving through somewhere scenic we would play "The Wildlife Game" The rules are simple. Whoever spotted the most wildlife won. The only catch was that it had to be "verified" by someone else, meaning that the point didn't count unless someone else saw the critter that you pointed out. The only other rule was that ordinary birds such as robins and crows didn't count. It had to be a really rare bird like a bald eagle in order to score a point.

We delivered some bulls to Star Valley, Wyoming on Tuesday. We went through Swan Valley, Idaho around Palisades Reservoir so that we didn't have to go over Teton Pass with a trailer full of bulls. It was a pretty drive. I was taking in the scenery when through a clearing in the pines I noticed a large grey animal walking along the frozen shoreline. At first it didn't register, but then I did a double take. The first thing out of my mouth was "Do you think there's wolves around here?" Jonathan said yes and asked if I just saw one. He unfortunately missed seeing the predator. I'm 98% positive it was a wolf. It was kind of a long way away and I only saw it for a few seconds and 1 1/2 of those seconds it didn't click in my brain what I was looking at. I've seen my fair share of coyotes though and I'm 98% sure it wasn't a coyote. It was bigger, wasn't as mangy looking, and had a different shaped head. So even though it wasn't verified, I saw a wolf in the wild :) Do you believe me? I texted my sister after and when she called me back the first thing she asked me was, "Did it look like Jacob?" (Twilight readers will understand)

I always have a goal of making my posts short and sweet so that I don't bore what readers I might have...but, my friends have teased me since high school that I cannot tell a short story. And this is true, no matter how hard I try. This experience and this post reminded me of when I worked at an animal hospital in high school. I loved that job. One day someone brought in a wolf hybrid, which by law we weren't allowed to work on because it was considered a wild animal even though it was half dog. The vet tech that brought it back into the hospital area didn't realize we couldn't do anything with it though, so she put it in a holding kennel until the vet was available. I had no idea any of this was going on, but when I walked by the kennel it was in I knew exactly what it was. A lot of people don't realize how huge wolves are. I am betting that kennel was probably 3 feet wide by 5 feet long. It was the largest kennel there was. That wolf hybrid filled the whole kennel. Its paws were as large as my hand. It was massive. I would say the wild dog I was around the same size. So there you have it, I saw a wolf, but not by our house, thank goodness :)