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'He is scared of the wolves,' Antonia whispered to me. 'In his country there are very many, and they eat men and women.' We slid closer together along the bench.

Listen:

There are six sleighs drawn by three horses each and carrying from six to twelve passengers. There is starlight on the snow and the road is through a forest. The first distant wolf howl does not drown the tinkle of the sleigh-bells or the laughter of the wedding guests. But the rallying cry is answered from many sides, the leaders of the pack draw nearer, and fear grips every heart. The bride sobs on the groom's bosom and the drivers lash their horses to breakneck speed. The rear sleigh upsets, the passengers sprawl out over the snow and the wolves are on top of them in a moment. The screams of horses being eaten alive are more dreadful than the shrieks of people whose entrails are being torn out. The cries of terror from the remaining sleighs are as loud as the cries of pain from the dying. The wolves are silent now - they have other work to do.

That's from "The Wolf-Pack", by Vilhjalmur Stefansson and published in 1927. Stefansson, as I'm sure many of you will recognize, is recalling the famous scene from Willa Cather's novel My Antonia, in which an entire wedding party is pursued and summarily gobbled up by hundreds of voracious Ukrainian wolves.

The wolves were bad that winter, and everyone knew it, yet when they heard the first wolf-cry, the drivers were not much alarmed. They had too much good food and drink inside them. The first howls were taken up and echoed and with quickening repetitions. The wolves were coming together. There was no moon, but the starlight was clear on the snow. A black drove came up over the hill behind the wedding party. The wolves ran like streaks of shadow; they looked no bigger than dogs, but there were hundreds of them. ~ (My Antonia)

Stefansson continues:

There are hundreds of them, you see, and the wolves have proverbially good appetites. Nothing will save the last sleigh but throwing the bride to the wolves. This Miss Cather accordingly does, and so do half the other authors of tales. But it seldom happens that quite everybody is eaten. Somebody has to be saved, to give the narrator a chance to portray the survivor's life of shame and remorse through many effective pages that lead to a distant and friendless grave.

Now his middle horse was being almost dragged by the other two. Pavel gave Peter the reins and stepped carefully into the back of the sledge. He called to the groom that they must lighten-- and pointed to the bride. The young man cursed him and held her tighter. Pavel tried to drag her away. In the struggle, the groom rose. Pavel knocked him over the side of the sledge and threw the girl after him. He said he never remembered exactly how he did it, or what happened afterward. Peter, crouching in the front seat, saw nothing. The first thing either of them noticed was a new sound that broke into the clear air, louder than they had ever heard it before--the bell of the monastery of their own village, ringing for early prayers. ~ (My Antonia)

Needless to say, keeping the wolf from the door by heaving newlyweds to the dogs isn't going to make you many friends with the local fire brigade. The bell tolls for thee. Pavel's momma wouldn't even look at him after that one and the two self preservationists would be cast to the four winds.

And thats the kind of depraved fright night scenario the Bush/Cheney ballyhoo machine wants etched into your optical nerve whenever you watch their latest campaign ads. Wolves in the shadows and future happy honeymoons horribly denied. And they want you to believe that John Kerry and John Edwards are the modern day equivalent of Cather's Pavel and Peter; preparing to lead the nation, like an unsuspecting wedding party, across a frozen midnight of grisly bestial gore splattered doom. A nightmarish sleigh ride of terror where we all will eventually be chucked overboard and consumed by snarling wild animals.

At night, before I went to sleep, I often found myself in a sledge drawn by three horses, dashing through a country that looked something like Nebraska and something like Virginia. ~ (My Antonia)

Never mind that it's the Bush administration itself that has been driving that lead sledge for the last four years. And never mind that it was the Bush administration that failed to take note, despite warnings, of the wulf in the hemlock before it struck that first carriage on 9/11. Forget that it's the Bush administration that decided to waste valuable lives commandeering a run amuck coach through the sands of Iraq rather than confronting fully the obvious danger flickering among the shadows. And forget that it's the Bush Cheney team that will apparently go to any lengths to save the skin on its own panic stricken rump whenever the occasion warrants. Forget all that. That's not the chase scene narrative the Bush/Cheney fiction writers want you to read. The right wing prophecy machine projects it's menacing message upon the theater screen.

Kerry and Edwards are the real potential threat you see, so goes the frightful yarn, and its up to vigilant party goers to preempt all future fiendish plots before either one of those guys have a chance to bonk you upside the head and fling your newly hitched blushing alabaster squeeze into a cold snowbank to be devoured by lupine horrors yet unrealized.

To flight with Pavel and Peter! Away with you liberal horsemen of the apocalypse! For you shall wander remorseful and shamed in America, and ultimately, to vanish into a "distant and friendless" political grave.

As a further public service it should be noted that Stefansson's article makes clear that wolf pack attack stories were something of a reoccuring staple of newspapers in the early 1900's.
Hundreds of them over the years apparently. Including the New York Times which ran a detailed account of a savage Christmas Eve attack by a pack of timber wolves upon an elderly Canadian trapper. This is an excerpted account of that attack which appeared (apparently) on the front page of New York Times on December 28, 1922.

Wolves Devour 3 Men In Northern Ontario. An Elderly White Trapper and Two Indians Fall Victims to a Hoarde of Hungry Beasts Port Arthur, Ont., Dec. 27 - A great roving band of hungry timber wolves has devoured three men... Last Saturday an elderly trapper left his cabin in the woods seventy miles north of Ignace to mush down to the settlement for his Christmas mail...There was no mail, however, and the old man said he would come back Christmasmorning. At noon he had not arrived. The postmaster sent two Indians to follow the trail. ... About two miles from the settlement the Indians found a spot pounded down in the snow. There was blood. Bits of dog harness torn to shreds were scattered about. In the midst of them the Indians found human bones. They hastened back to report their discovery. The lure of the bounty on wolves, however, urged the Indians to take to the trail again, with extra ammunition. They sped behind the dog team into the woods as the villagers waved good-bye. They did not return. Yesterday a new searching party departed. They found another patch trodden in the snow, with much more blood, about two miles from the first. The two guns the Indians had carried were lying in the crimsomed snow. Scattered about were bones, bits of clothing and empty shells. The carcasses of sixteen dead wolves - some half eaten - lay stretched in a circle about the remains of the two Indian hunters.

Yeeks huh? And a "White Trapper" no less! The outrage! Keep that in mind this holiday season when you're mushing your way down the driveway to retreive your Lillian Vernon catalog.

The only problem with this story, which appeared in the Times - Judith Miller are you listening - is that it apparently never happened. At least according to Stefansson, and those questioned about the story, including Ottawa's Commissioner of National Parks and residents of Ignace. No one had ever heard of any old trapper or Indians or a pack of wolves attacking anyone at all for that matter. Least of all on Christmas day. The story was apparently complete bunkum.

So whats the point? And why were hundreds of wolf pack attack stories supposedly circulating in US newspapers a-way-back-a-when?

Stephansson notes that at the time that the United States Government (the Bureau of Biological Survey) was responsible for the nations' "wolf-killing service", which, was also busy fielding "appeals" from ranchers in the western US who claimed the wolves were destroying their domestic herds.

Leaving the speculative possiblity that those old exaggerated wolf attack tales were perhaps little more than excitable boo-scare stories fed to the media by western cattle interests and intended to persuade the public at large of some looming furry menace to their ancestral food chain? Afterall, who wants to poke through the remains of poor grampa's half eaten bones on Christmas morn? Slurped down like a holiday ham while out checking his muskrat traps? Jeepers no.

So it doesn't surprise me that the Circle 'W' Ranch would come up with sinister Willie the Wolf attack allegories to titilate an easily spooked publics' imagination. These guys see themselves as shepherds to some kind of sheepish cud chewing domesticated moo-cow Republic. Tuxedo moon cowboy wardens to a herd of clanking frightened canaille. A huge stockyard for which they have a vested financial interest in corraling with space based barbed wire and harvesting on behalf of their own greedy appetites. Fear grips your heart!

I have no doubt that the Bush Cheney pack would be running werwolf attack ads against the Dems if they could get away with it. No tall tallyho is too unreal for these fly-by-night runaway bullshit jockeys.

I think we all know who the real wolves in this picture are.

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