The next night one of the wolves, Reuben, which I now know to have been the beta animal, walked boldly up to me and started to sniff me all over and sniff the air. He didn’t touch—he was just checking me out; and he did this for a couple of nights. The next night I was sitting up on the bank at the highest point in the enclosure with my legs out in front of me, knees in the air. The same wolf came over to me and did exactly what he had done the previous two nights: sniffed me, sniffed the air, sniffed down my legs, and then suddenly without warning he lunged forward and in a split second his incisors had taken a hard, very painful nip out of the fleshy bit of my knee.
I sat frozen to the spot. I didn’t know what to do. If I got up and ran, would he run after me with the pack and bring me down? If I lashed out at him, would I make him more aggressive? So out of sheer ignorance, I sat there thinking, Christ, this is it, game over.
But he backed off, and stood looking at me quizzically as if gauging my reaction. Then he turned and disappeared into the darkness and I didn’t see him again until the following night, when he came and did exactly the same thing. He repeated the behavior every night for about two weeks, by which time my knees were black-and-blue. He might bite a different knee or nip my shin, but it was always the same procedure; he would come close, sniff, then lash out and disappear into the night. Sometimes he did it two or three times a night.
I had no idea what he was doing, but I knew that he couldn’t have meant me any real harm because he never followed it up with any sign of aggression and he never called over another wolf to join him—and with jaws that are capable of exerting fifteen hundred pounds of pressure per square inch, he could have had my kneecap off in seconds. But he chose not to and that’s what kept me going back for more. All I had to show for his assaults were thin lines of bruising on my knees and legs, like little wolf love bites. I didn’t react on any of those occasions, which I later discovered is what saved me.
The first thing a wolf will do, I came to realize, is find out whether a newcomer is trustworthy; the way he does that is by seeing how the stranger reacts to a bite. The incoming wolf immediately exposes his vulnerable throat area to signify that he has come in peace and the established wolf will dominate him until he is satisfied there is no threat. If I had pulled away or screamed, it could have been all over very quickly.
After two weeks of nips, Reuben started rolling his scent over me. He started with my feet, rubbing them with the side of his face, his teeth, the back of his ears, his hackles, and his tail. He then did the same to my legs, never biting, just rolling on me. If I got up and moved during this process, he’d nip me, back off, and if I didn’t react—which I didn’t—he’d come and start rolling on me again. What he was doing, I realized, was testing me. That is the beta’s role in the pack: to protect the others and to act like a bouncer at the door, making sure that no undesirable or threatening individual gets through. I must have satisfied him that I was acceptable because after four or five weeks he started bringing other members of the pack over.
This was the process that happens in the wild when a lone wolf attempts to join an established pack, as I later discovered. The ones that came to meet me were all high ranking and they didn’t touch me initially; they just stood behind Reuben and watched and sniffed, as he moved slowly around my body, nipping. He nipped the back of my head, not quite as roughly as he’d bitten other parts, but enough to produce blood spots that turned into scabs. Once or twice I tried moving back to try to rub against him, but any movement, whether subtle or sudden, got me another nip. He was biting me to keep me in place—and establishing that I could cope with their world, in which nips and bites are an important part of their communication.
I knew scent was important and I discovered that if I put on different clothes or washed or ate different food, the beta male would start nipping me again until he was satisfied that the new smell didn’t mean I was going to react differently to his approach or that my mood had changed. The other high-ranking wolves did the same thing, but he didn’t involve every wolf in the enclosure. The lower-ranking members of the pack, I was to learn, don’t question what the higher-ranking members decide; they are foot soldiers—they have an important job to do, but it is not to think for themselves.
I felt deeply flattered to have these creatures trust me so much that they were prepared to rub themselves against me, and an incredible sense of achievement to be tolerated in this way. It meant more to me than any human relationship I had established. I found myself looking forward to the end of each day when I could go and be with them again, and I stayed longer and longer during the nights. It was such a privilege to be allowed to sit among this family group and to feel that in some small way I was becoming a part of it. I was beginning to need these creatures that I had been frightened of for so long; I wanted to be with them. But what did they think of me? What did they think I was? They were always curious when I arrived, but what did they think when I left them? Did they miss me? I was attributing human values to them, and human emotions, which I came to realize are not part of their world. I had to learn to turn off my own.
After a while, they started greeting me when I went into the enclosure during the daytime and testing me in the same way as they did at night, a sure sign that they recognized and accepted me. There would be some nips and a bit of interaction that the other keepers began to notice. It felt good to see their reaction, to watch the surprise on their faces and to see them revising their view about these creatures that they fended off with broom handles. Little by little the days and nights merged and I found a week had gone by, and the only times that I had been away from the wolves was when I’d slipped out for some food. I once took a sleeping bag in with me but that was a mistake. The wolves tore it to shreds. They accepted my clothing but nothing else; and the truth was I needed nothing else. When I lay down to sleep, they settled down with me and the warmth of their bodies kept me warm. My excitement at what I had achieved with them was hard to contain.
I never allowed myself to feel complacent, however. I knew that anything could happen and there was no guarantee that because my last interaction had been good, the next one would be also. Every time I went into the enclosure I was full of apprehension, wondering what would happen next. I watched the way they behaved with one another—the way they wrestled and played, and snarled and snapped—and knew that if they started to treat me the same way, I wasn’t going to be able to cope. My skin wasn’t as tough as theirs. I wasn’t covered in thick fur and if they were as rough with me as I’d seen them be with one another, it would not only hurt, but I could sustain serious injuries. Would they recognize that my body was completely different from theirs? Their necks and throats, two of the areas they used most frequently to communicate, were also the best-protected parts of their bodies. My throat was one of the most vulnerable. One bite like the ones I had seen them give their fellow wolves would have been it for me.
But that sense of danger was as appealing as it was appalling. It was like watching a horror movie from behind a pillow, not wanting to see, not wanting to turn it off, and not being able to resist peeping. The excitement and the pleasure I derived from being with the wolves outweighed the danger. I felt comfortable with them; I admired the respectful way they interacted with one another, the hierarchy that obviously governed the pack, the discipline they meted out to members who stepped out of line or pushed in to feed before their elders and betters had eaten. I wasn’t able to articulate it at the time, but what I felt most of all was a sense of belonging. Here was a group of some of the most feared and revered creatures on earth, and they had accepted me into that group. I had taken a rigorous entry exam and been tested within an inch of my life, and by a mixture of luck and intuition, I had passed.
But