Canis lupus hominis

Farley Mowat served Canada in the Second World War.

Farley Mowat is routinely denounced by wolf experts for producing so many misconceptions about wolf behavior in Never Cry Wolf (1963). Like most of Mowat’s work, it is difficult to determine whether one should classify it as a novel or a memoir. Many “facts” in the novel have been called into question.

But one thing is clear, this book, perhaps more than any other, is the reason why wolves are protected in so much of their range today.

The book is the account of a zoologist who observes a wolf den in northern Canada. It also includes lore and mythology of the Ihalmiut, a group of Inuit who lived largely off of caribou. According to Mowat, these people saw the wolf as a necessity for maintaining the strength of caribou herds. They required big and fat caribou to survive, and the wolves helped to that end by culling the sick and weak animals.

Mowat heavily anthropomorphizes the wolves in the book.  The three adults are George, top male, and Angeline, his mate. To assist in the raising of the puppies, another male wolf, which Mowat calls “Uncle Albert,” acts as playful babysitter.

Mowat comes to love these wolves very much. He portrays them almost as the canine equivalents of the “noble savage.”   They only occasionally kill caribou. When denning, according to Mowat, they live almost solely on mice.

Of course, this part of the book has been the most heavily damned. Canis lupus doesn’t live on mice for any extended period of time, but its close cousin, the Ethiopian wolf, lives almost entirely on small rodents.

The final scene of the book is the one that is perhaps the most moving.

Assuming that the occupants have gone, Mowat climbs down into the wolf den to make some measurements. Once he reaches the end of the den, he comes across the glowing eyes of Angeline and her pups. He becomes frightened and quickly wriggles his way out of the den.

That’s how the book ends.  Mowat feels upset at himself for being so afraid of these wolves. After all, they have allowed him to observe the most intimate parts of his life, and they never offered to attack him.

Why should he have been afraid?

The book changed the perceptions of millions of people around the world. The Soviet Union heavily promoted Mowat’s work, and it wasn’t long before they banned wolf hunting, even if Soviet wolves did occasionally attack people.

For decades, we believed that the end of Never Cry Wolf was exactly how it happened.

It wasn’t until Mowat published Otherwise in 2008. This memoir accounts the years of his late teens through his service during the Second World War. It also covers the years after the war, when he returns to Canada deeply scarred man and goes into the arctic to find himself.

The story of the encounter with the wolves happened at this time, and when Mowat describes what happens, it is actually quite different from the ending of Never Cry Wolf.  It is not a flattering portrayal, and the possibility that this account is the true one is probably quite high.

Mowat describes what happened:

Mowat thought he had killed the wolves, and feeling so much guilt, he crawled back into the den.

This account didn’t appear in Never Cry Wolf.

But when one realizes that he was a veteran of the war, we can understand why he may have been so willing to go for the gun when he felt frightened.

Those feelings of extreme guilt after trying to kill these wolves are really what made Mowat’s career as a writer.

In his words about the natural world, there is atonement.

No, he may not have written totally truthful nonfiction.

But I suppose one can forgive him.

Here was a psychologically wounded veteran who was able to find himself again.

He was no longer the creature he was in combat.

He was human again.

I think we can forgive him of this attempted murder.

And whatever inconsistencies and exaggerations exist in his work.

He needed to make amends.

And so he has.