Standing alone in the snow behind his scope, watching the wolves feed and care for the pups, Rick understood what Murie had meant. They were indeed friendly, but they could also be cruel, snapping at or even pinning one another to reinforce their relative places in the pack’s hierarchy. Inevitably one wolf always found himself at the bottom of the totem pole, living through an endless succession of difficult encounters with his packmates, fraught with fear and the prospect of rejection. And there were others for whom life just seemed easy, who were blessed with the charisma to make others love
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“Standing alone in the snow behind his scope, watching the wolves feed and care for the pups, Rick understood what Murie had meant. They were indeed friendly, but they could also be cruel, snapping at or even pinning one another to reinforce their relative places in the pack’s hierarchy. Inevitably one wolf always found himself at the bottom of the totem pole, living through an endless succession of difficult encounters with his packmates, fraught with fear and the prospect of rejection. And there were others for whom life just seemed easy, who were blessed with the charisma to make others love them and want to follow them.”
