FRIEND OF WOLVES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 241, 12 October 1931, Page 11

FRIEND OF WOLVES

MAN’S WONDERFUL POWER TALKING TO THE PACK LANGUAGE OF THE BEASTS The wolf-call echoed through the pinewoods and the pack came bounding through the thicket, their eyes agleaiu. They paused, then flung themselves with a yelp on the man who stood among them. People safely outside the steel fencing of tho wolves’ enclosure at Whipsnade—England’s new zoological park —were petrified with alarm. They waited to see those bared fangs rend his throat . . . Then he spoke to that swirling pack horde, and the language he used belonged to the beasts. He was a human blood-brother of the pack —a grown-up Mowgli of the wolves. (Mowgli, a native boy in Kipling’s ‘ ‘Jungle Book,” was suckled and reared by wolves). The man spoke to the wolves in their own tongue —in tho wolf language which no humans are supposed to understand. Kipling has probably never met Mr Spens Steuart, says the Daily Herald; but he ought, for here is one who, in the prosaic guise of a business man, has stepped out of the pages of the “Jungle Book.” Mr Steuart is allowed to go among the wolves at Whipsnade to talk to them, play with them and tend their wounds—the battle scars of the pack —and their ailments. They greet him as a welcome playmate and gambol round him like so many dogs, leaping upon him to be fondled, fighting jealously for his caresses. The keepers themselves keep the pack at a distance, and woe to the stranger who tries to copy Mr Steuart. “I am extremely fond of the wolves and they, I am sure, are very fond of me,” said Mr Steuart, recently. “They even allow me to handle their cubs. I know their language and I know them all by name. I cqn call them individually and talk to them. “I knew most of the Whipsnade wolves at the Regent’s Park Zoo before they went to Whipsnade They would be about nine months old when they were moved. I did not see them again for over a year. “I went down to Whipsnade and ‘called the wolves all by name. I could scarcely hope that they had remembered me so long; yet they came bounding out of the woods to greet me. You see I had nursed their mother through an illness. It took me eight years to learn their language; but there is no sound in their vocabulary which I cannot make and understand. They answer mo and talk to me.” Once Mr Steuart was in tho cage at the zoo with a she-wolf. the mate of the “Killer Wolf”—so dangerous that even Mr Steuart did not trust himself to tackle him. He was sitting petting her, with her head nestling on his knee, when the “Killer” suddenly appeared through a partition accidentlv loft unlocked. He rushed forward with a jealous snarl, his eyes blazing. Mre Steuart. alarmed for once, began to back toward the door, talking to the “Killer d j n the wolf-language the while. The enraged animal was ‘bewildered and, while still angry, kept his distance until keepers undid the gate and Mr Steuart was able to edge through. After a time ho made great friends with with the “Killer.”