Besides my blessing of being an empath with the ability to feel the emotions of all living things, I can also teleport myself anywhere at will. This saves me a lot of waiting at airports.
I’d heard about the red wolf being an endangered species so I zoomed off to the forest of North Carolina to find out more.
Walking along a trail, I got a sense I wasn’t alone. Suddenly a wolf jumped in front of me and barked.
“Whoa, whoa, nice doggie,” I said.
“Don’t give me that mushy pet talk,” said the wolf. “My name is Fang and I’m an independent being, not your plaything.”
“OK, that’s fair. How are you doing?”
“So far I’m surviving, not that you humans care.”
“Well, I care. That’s why I’m here.”
“Wait, are you that story teller for the humans who talks to the animals?”
“Right, I’m Frank Lingo.”
“Frank Lingo … isn’t that just a silly way of saying straight talk?”
“Yes, but I like to think I bring some insight about the lives of other species. For instance, are you red wolves re-populating here?”
“We’re trying to raise our pups, if that’s what you mean. It doesn’t help that you humans try to kill us with your thundersticks.”
“Yeah, a lot of people see wolves as a danger to humans and their livestock so they try to remove the threat.”
“HUMANS are the threat!” Fang snarled. You’re the ones that cut down our woods, leaving us no place to live.”
“I’m sorry for that. I guess it goes back to our old stories where the wolf is the bad guy.”
“Well, in our stories the humans are the scary ones. They’ve been trying to kill us off for ever.”
“Wolves have stories?” I asked.
“Sure. You think all we do is howl at the moon? In the stories our elders tell, humans were once our friends. We lived as equals on the Earth. Then humans started enslaving some animals and said they owned them. And some of our wolf-brothers even became their dogs.”
“So the dogs we keep in our houses are really ancestral wolves?”
“Hard to believe, isn’t it, when you look at some of those yapping little mutts? But it shows there’s still a bond between canines and humans.”
“Yeah, people love their dogs. They consider dogs part of the family.”
“Right, but you humans have forgotten that all beings are part of the family. You think you’re somehow apart from other animals and somehow superior. But you’re just another creature eating and pooping on the land.”
“But you kill other animals, too, right?”
Fang bared his teeth and let out a menacing growl.
“We hunt and eat only for our sustenance, Lingo. We don’t destroy forests to make our dens like you do. It’s the balance of nature. Without our hunting, the world would be overrun with rabbits, because those buggers are always making babies.”
“Do deer feel the fear when you’re near, tho?”
“Deer and their kin like elk know that we keep them in check. When wolves aren’t around, deer and elk eat too much of the vegetation, causing riverbanks to erode. But when wolves are there, even beavers can flourish, making dams which create habitats for fish and birds.
“What can we do to help wolves, then?” I asked
“Respect us, for a start. Give us our props for our place in nature. Stop telling those phony ‘big bad wolf’ stories to your pups. Don’t snare us in traps or strike us dead with your thundersticks. And quit acting like you own the world. Leave some land for us and the other animals to roam in.”
“OK, Fang, I’ll pass your message along to my fellow humans.”
I reached out to pat him on the head. That’s when he bit my hand.
“Try to remember, Lingo. We are not your pets.”
Frank Lingo, based in Lawrence, Kansas, is a former columnist for the Kansas City Star and author of the novel “Earth Vote.” Email: lingofrank@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, December 15, 2021
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us