Cunning Wolves

1895

Their Sagacity Leads Them to Refrain From Poisoned Food.

The extraordinary sagacity of wolves has been very powerfully instanced in a recent event on the upper Waldron range. A colt died, and Mr. Warnock took ten strychnine tablets and inserted them carefully in various parts of the body. He did not go near that vicinity for a couple of days, and when he did he went expecting to see some results from the bait. There was, however, no sign of a wolf, living or dead, in sight. He hunted around within a radius of a mile or two, but found nothing, and finally he went over and examined what remained of the dead colt. There was not much. The skin appeared to have been neatly and completely flayed from the body; nearly every particle of flesh was gone, as were also the rib bones and anything smaller; the fore and hind legs had been wrenched off from the knee joint down and carried off some distance, where everything mashable on them had been properly mashed.

The skin was almost intact, and spreading it out, hair side down, Mr. Warnock casually examined it, when he noticed, with some surprise, a small bunch of flesh that had been untouched, and which was adhering to the hide, and inclosed in which was the strychnine tablet. A closer examination revealed the really extraordinary fact that every single one of the ten strychnine pellets that had been inserted had been left similarly. Every shred of flesh had been eaten all around them and not a single one touched. No wonder it is a difficult matter to catch wolves when they are endowed with a cunning like this. The explanation is that on this one occasion Mr. Warnock had picked up the pellets before inserting them into the bait with his fingers instead of, as was his usual custom, with a pair of forceps. But the fact illustrates the kind of foes the ranchers have to deal with. — Macleod Gazette.