The Zoo's wolves

I love wolves. Who doesn't, excluding Sarah Palin and the governor of Idaho? They look great on your mom's xxx large t-shirts, all over truck stop souvenirs, and of course, on Sarah Palin's wall. (bitch) These graceful, jewel-eyed, silvery charismatic megafauna are only a few alleles away from being our own cute cuddly dogs anyway. It's so easy to love them. The two wolves at oxbow are no different. How cool it is to work at a zoo with them! This morning, I got to clean out their pen, hide meat around in clever places for them to find, and give them one of their "enrichment" toys for the day. It's too bad we're not allowed to directly interact with them in any way. I don't mean to say I wish we could just roll and tumble around with them like they're golden retrievers, no, that's a good way to get some free facial reconstruction surgery, but maybe a little more interaction than just a few brief "who's a good boy! who's a good boy!" through a fence before leaving them all alone in their pen at the mercy of screaming children for the rest of the day. I'm sure there's a fine, yet reasonable line between the two. I dunno. I'm not trying to criticize the way things are done at the zoo, I'm just expressing my own wishes mostly. Maybe I do just want to be part of the pack. Can you blame me? Who wouldn't want to howl with these guys?

...So, there's two wolves, brother and sister, who both spend all their time basically running about playing and fighting, the male spends about all of his time asserting his dominance over her, growling, biting her face, standing over her, you know... just like all siblings do. I've been trying to think of names for them and have drawn a blank. I keep feeling like it should be some sort of fancy mystical native american sounding name, like Nodari and Istoka, or Quinlai and Shinoon, and other gibberish I made up off the top of my head. I'll say it means "walks like the wind" or "has low self-esteem about his tail" or something. Since none of those random words sound good enough, namely because they're just words I made up, I think I'll just name them after two characters in a book I'm reading right now, characters with names some other author pulled out of his/her ass, which just happens to be a book about a boy and a girl wolf, named Faolan and Edme. they'll have to do. I haven't managed to get very high quality individual photographs to show you which one is Shitooknook and which one's Quicokblok, so you'll just have to guess that for yourself.