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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Wolves, please don't cry.", September 17, 2006
NEVER CRY WOLF is Farley Mowat's first-person reminiscence of his time spent studying wolves in the Canadian arctic. NEVER CRY WOLF, first published in 1963, was one of the earliest, most widely-read, and most effective conservation narratives ever penned. It's Russian edition (the title of which, literally translated back into English, is WOLVES, PLEASE DON'T CRY) was responsible for a Soviet ban on wolf hunting that spared the animals in their natural habitat and gained Mr. Mowat a notorious reputation at the U.S. State Department, which banned his subsequent entry into the United States.
NEVER CRY WOLF has been attacked as being more fable than fact, and this may be true. Mowat has often said that he prefers not to let facts get in the way of the truth, and there is no question that he wanted his readers to come to love these generally benighted creatures. If one doubts the low esteem in which wolves are held one only needs to consider representative northern European fairy tales: Peter and the Wolf, Little Red Riding Hood, and others present the wolf as a four-legged homicidal maniac. Unfortunately, this agelong prejudice has nearly exterminated the wolf in most of its range, courtesy of a certain two-legged homicidal maniac. Like our primordial fear of the dark, and the very common terror of cats, lukophobia derives from the lost years of the cave.
Mowat tells a good story. As a young Game Warden he is sent to remote northermost Canada to evaluate the effect of wolf depredations on the caribou herds. What he finds is that the wolves eat only sick, aged, or weak caribou, thus contributing to natural selection (while human beings are actively destroying whole herds of caribou). He finds that the usual wolf diet is skinks, voles and mice (he claims to have tried mouse as a meal and includes a recipe for Souris a la Creme in the book). He finds that the wolves are a natural part of the ecosystem, and that a pack of wolves together is far less destructive than even a single human being with a rifle.
Mowat tells us of observing a wolf family at close range, the members of which he names "George", "Angeline," and "Uncle Albert." Together with a litter of pups, these three become the center of Mowat's tale. He credits them with all sorts of anthropomorphisms including dramatic abilities to communicate amongst themselves and with other wolves, and gives each a strikingly distinct personality. He respects George and he likes the clownish Uncle Albert, but he is simply head-over-heels in love with Angeline, over whom he waxes almost as rhapsodic as if she were a human female.
Lupinologists dismiss most of Mowat's observations as purely imaginative. Whether Mowat tosses away his credibility or makes his point more powerfully by ascribing so many fine human virtues to these creatures (they are nothing short of poster-wolves for 'family values') is dependent upon the reader and his or her mindset toward the natural world.
For this reviewer, who is tired of the slow, careless and sometimes intentional destruction of our natural environment, and who is convinced that our Earth is striking back against the imbalances we've created by generating warming seas, melting icecaps, tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, and all sorts of other phenomena, it does not seem at all a bad idea for us to humanize the wolf if by so humanizing him we will be more inclined to save him. And the same goes for the rest of the planet.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Comedian As Scientist Entertains As He Informs, September 27, 2006
I picked this book up recently for the first time since high-school, some 15-plus (!) years ago. Maybe it was Steve Irwin's death, or a viewing of the documentary Grizzly Man, that got me to thinking about it- either way, I'm glad I did. I'd forgotten what a wacky character Farley Mowat was, and how much more there is to this quick read than dry scientific reporting.
Mowat's communing with the wolves (circa 1950) was partially borne of pure, scientific curiosity; in his own words, he "took the word biology- which means the study of life- at its face value," and sought to immerse himself outdoors and away from an aseptic laboratory. The other thing engendering his research was the vagary of the Canadian government, which set him to studying wolves in Ottawa with a throw of the dice (not to mention next to no itinerary, instructions, or training).
Mowat dispelled major myths of wolf as bloodthirsty, marauding monsters, and showed them to be gentle, caring, and family-oriented (in fact, mostly monogamous) creatures. He never felt threatened by his lupine companions, despite keeping quarters very close to- and at one point, entering- the den. He witnessed "George, Angeline, and Uncle Albert" engage in compassionate acts like nurturing and training young pups and serving as hosts for traveling packs of non-native wolves. The chapter at the narrative's end ("To Kill A Wolf") describing the indiscriminate and government-promoted wolf hunting practices is made sadder by the way the wolves have by then won the reader's heart.
What made this nature tale really shine, however, was Mowat's plucky attitude and unconventional scientific methodology. He alternately horrified Eskimo locals and won them over with alcohol. He pretty much ignored what little government protocol he had to follow until nearly the end of his trip, cramming in his duties like a high-schooler churning out a last-minute term paper. He learned to sleep via a nightly succession of 5-10 minute "wolf-naps" (and told of later ticking off a female companion understandably unused to the practice). And the- ahem- frosting on the cake was his approach to scientifically determine whether or not large mammals could sustain themselves on a diet of mice alone, after discovering over time that rodents constituted the majority of the wolves' diet: he ate nothing but the same, for months on end. God bless unorthodox scientific discoveries, and the lovable nut jobs that make them.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Deadpan, clinical, hilarious, July 20, 2005
Farley Mowat is what every scientist should be; dry, sarcastic, clinical, hilarious, and not afraid to eat mice. The biologist who spent two years in the Arctic wild won me over with his warm descriptions of the wolf family he watches (George, Angelina, and Uncle Albert). Brilliantly funny and informative!
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