The Call of the Wild

The morning after our first significant snowfall,  Willie’s world was covered in cold, white powder ten inches deep.  I shoveled pathways around the house and out to the studio, then came back to let Willie outside.  He stepped out the door onto a path the width of a shovel blade, a wall of snow on either side.  Born just this past in April in Louisiana, Willie had never seen snow before and he was perplexed, confused, amazed.  He ran the length of the shoveled path, turned around, then ran back to me and sits, head cocked to one side.

Then he heard it.

There’s something beneath the snow!

Willie jammed his snout into the powder then pulled it out, instantly transformed to an arctic fox, his head covered with snow from muzzle to ears.  He dug like fury, then jammed his head back into the snow, disappearing up to his shoulders.  As Willie rooted around in search of that mouse or mole or vole, I recalled the Jack London books I read as a kid, and all those episodes of Wild Kingdom I watched with my dad.

When Willie’s head became visible again, I could see he had a small frozen mammal in his mouth – its legs and tail stiff and inert.  “Willie!” I said as I approached, “give!”  But Willie — an animal, after all – protected his prize and ran from me through the snow, chewing.

“Well,” Richard said once I was back inside the house, “it probably beats those bison and brown rice pellets we’ve been feeding him.”