Never Cry Wolf

Let's pretend that you're an unsuspecting pug-dog on a day trip near Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska. Let's pretend that you throw caution to the wind and wander a little out of leash-radius without even wearing your hand-knit sweater. Before you know it, you find yourself snatched up in the jaws of a black wolf, carried out of rescue range, and suddenly acutely aware that you are shape and size of a meatloaf. What are your odds of survival?

Odds are pretty good, it turns out, if the wolf is Romeo--the main character of Black Wolf of the Glacier, a forthcoming book by Deb Vanasse. Now you see why I am back from my blogging hiatus.

Black Wolf will tell the true (if somewhat apocryphal) story of Romeo, a wolf who frequented the Mendenhall Glacier near Juneau, Alaska. Romeo never appeared with a pack, but fraternized regularly with local and visiting dogs. He was known for approaching people and dogs without menace or interest in food, though he was often provoked and offered snacks. Neither fighter nor scavenger, Romeo was playful and nonchalant, as if the words "I am a wolf, etc.," hung in a footnote from a tiny asterisk above his huge, dusky head.

In spite of Romeo's casual demeanor, a black wolf who emerges in periodic cameos before the ampitheater of Mendenhall Glacier

carries some inevitable glamour. 
Who can resist a lone black wolf in front of a glacier?

Romeo's admirers speculated about his errant behavior. Some claim that Romeo lived in exile from his pack after losing a previous love, a living alternate ending to Shakespeare's play. Romeo reportedly earned his name* after making romantic overtures with the dog owned by Nick Jans, the writer/photographer who originally chronicled Romeo's story.

Or perhaps Romeo the wolf, like the Montague, wooed his enemy (in the rivalry of civilization/wilderness) and paid for it.

Romeo disappeared in 2009, and the prosecution of his suspected murderers has become one of Juneau's most publicized crime stories. Let's not get into that now, though. I have completed my first illustration / character study of Romeo, an action sequence that plays out his typical morning: sunrise, and a vole for breakfast.

I admit, I have never beheld a wolf devouring a vole. I naturally assumed that some blood was involved, so I painted a few globules on the snow. Perhaps I was a bit excessive,

but with good reason. My Black Wolf illustrations will take the form of paintings, and it was easier for me to remove blood from a painting than to add it, so I erred on the gorier side.

My gracious editor at the University of Alaska Press claimed no aesthetic reservations about showing some blood. Author Deb Vanasse questioned whether the vole would have had an opportunity to bleed. Wolf scat, after all, contains bones and fur, trappings of an unfinicky dining experience. Also, I've seen the way a dog can take down a large-ish pizza slice with some frantic working of jaws, especially if the dog thinks there's a chance the pizza will escape. Maybe pizza slices and voles, unlike pug dogs, get a pretty short ride. 

 

I have submitted the above revisions: one with carnivorous traces, and one with . . . well, it could just be the morning light on the glacier.

*Then again, the name Romeo all have been a pun on Alfa/Alpha Romeo. I don't know whether Nick Jans is into Italian luxury cars, but it seems unlikely.