#wolf OR-7

[weaselle]

You came face to face with a wolf in the woods? What’s the story in that

ok ok so i'm driving through the woods down from Oregon to visit the fam in California, right? And right as i'm about to cross the border from OR to CA i'm like, oh shit, pops is the only one i don't have a christmas present for.

So i see this big weird log-cabin-ass liquor store and i'm all, he loves a unique bottle of wine, gotta be something in there he can't get back home so i pull in.

It's a building made of logs all by itself on the edge of the woods in the hills along the N. border of California. While i'm in there i ask to use the bathroom and they tell me sure, it's a small separate building behind the store

just walk down the foot path into the woods a few yards until you get to the fork and take the right side path to the little bathroom hut. Don't take the left side path unless you want to disappear all the way into the woods. Cool.

So i walk into the woods on the little trail, and i get to the fork in the path, and i can see the little bathroom hut off to the right. Before i take the right, as i'm standing there, i look down the left side path that trails off into the woods.

And right then this full grown wolf steps out onto the trail, about 15 feet from me.

it was in fact, this exact wolf. Altho he is older in this picture than when i met him. When he stepped out to come face to face with me that day, he was quite a bit thinner.

Now at 15 feet, i instantly knew he was a wolf. Not a coyote, certainly not a dog, when you're close and you look in their face it's just different in the snout and eyes.

So i freeze, and i'm looking at him but i'm not making any sustained eye-contact and i'm feeling that weird calm feeling i get when shit is too serious to panic. And i'm trying to look bored because that's the safest middle ground between acting like prey and acting like a threat and i'm like, shit. Shit. Okay. This is a wolf. This is a whole ass wild wolf in the woods, only about 3 body lengths from me. What is about to happen here. One of us is going to do something soon and it better not be the wrong thing.

Wolf is just standing there the same as me. Wouldn't surprise me if it was having basically the exact same thoughts

i wasn't working professionally with dogs yet, but even then i knew canines real well, and as i'm standing there getting a real good look i realize, fuck, this wolf is like, just under 2 years old.

This is very bad news for me.

See, an experienced adult wolf knows things. For instance, an experienced adult wolf knows exactly what it prefers to hunt (not humans) and has probably gotten good at hunting those things (and is therefor not desperate for food) and an older experienced wolf knows that it really can't afford to get injured in a fight if it can avoid one, and probably has figured out that humans are to be left alone.

But a wolf between a year and a half and two years? Is just becoming an adult. This is a wolf that meets an animal the same size as it and has questions.

Questions like "Is this a creature i want to eat?" or "maybe this is a creature that wants to eat me?" and the problem with both of those questions is the answer can easily wind up being "i should probably try to kill it"

Because a mature wolf will assess a threat for the safest way to deal with it, but, like a twenty year old person, a young inexperienced wolf is more prone to brash actions, such as preemptively attacking something it perceives as a threat.

I'm checking his body language and it is reading as uncertain, patient, fairly relaxed but ready for explosive action. Not great, but could be a lot worse.

All this is going through my calm calm head. Like of course i am frightened, but in emergencies my heart like, actually seems to slow a bit? and i get this weird calm clear feeling.

Anyway i'm standing there looking at this wolf, and this wolf is looking at me, and i start to realize... i'm the mature adult in this situation. I have to be the one to decide how this encounter goes.

It was at this point i recalled something i read in a book about cats.

In this book, the author goes to visit her father who is studying lions in Africa. He's staying in a village and when she gets there she is told she might stumble across a lion in the brush if she goes walking around outside the village for any reason (which is why her father is there) and that if she DOES come across a lion, for generations the locals have had a little social exchange worked out with the lions, so she should speak loudly but politely to the lion, and then walk purposefully away at an oblique angle to the lion.

So of course she's on a walk one day and a lion suddenly stands up not far from her. She freezes, unable to do the thing she had been told to do. After waiting and waiting, finally the lion makes a series of loud grunts, and then walks off at an oblique angle, as if to show her how it was done.

I remembered how much sense that made to me when i read it. An oblique angle is like, not straight ahead of you and not straight to the side of you, but sort of halfway between, like one of the branches on a "Y". An oblique angle is more toward than away, so it cannot be mistaken for any kind of running away, but it isn't directly toward the animal enough to be threatening. it is the physical communication equivalent of "You're in my way, but i'll be polite and go around you".

At an oblique angle to my right was the bathroom. So trying to seem like i didn't care about the wolf at all while simultaneously keeping very close track of its reactions, I walked kind of toward him, but way off to one side.

He relaxed more as i did so, watching me go. Then i was inside the little bathroom with the door shut and all my calm went away.

I didn't have my phone on me, and i was in a tiny room in the woods, and all i could think was, jesus christ that was a wolf. A fucking wolf. I just like, walked right by a wolf. A wolf, dude. What if I open the door and the wolf is RIGHT there on the other side? Can i get the door shut fast enough or will he be able to force its way into this cramped space with me? Have i just trapped myself in the woods with this wolf?

Since i was in there anyway, i peed and washed my hands... and then i cracked the door open with my heart in my throat. But that wolf was long gone -- probably melted back into the woods the instant my eyes were all the way off it.

I went back into the liquor store and told the lady in there that there was a wolf nearby, and she said they'd caught a glimpse of it a couple times, and they thought it was a dog jumped out of somebody's truck? I'm not sure she believed me.

Couldn't really blame her. As far as i was aware, there hadn't been any wild wolves in California in close to a hundred years.

So when i got where i was going and found some time to myself around a computer a couple days later, i looked it up.

Sure enough it turns out this wolf on the northern border of California was Wolf OR-7, who, wearing a tracking collar, at one and a half years old, became the first confirmed wild wolf to be in California since 1924, crossing the Oregon border within two days of my sighting him in that area. I found a thread online of people who had managed to get photos of him crossing their property, and while i'm not an expert at identifying wolves, it seemed to be the same wolf. And the right age. And confirmed to be on the border of California the same time I was. And was the only wolf in a hundred years to be there.

I didn't notice a tracking collar on him, but he's also wearing it in the above pic i included, so you can seen how i might have missed it.

So, I met wolf OR-7 face to face! And it was very memorable.

He did very well for himself. Went back up to Oregon and got himself a mate, and founded the Rogue Wolf Pack, the first pack in west Oregon in forever. Most wild wolves are lucky to see six years, but OR-7 (sometimes called Journey) lived to be 11. Some of his pups grew up and started their own packs.

Somebody wrote a book about him, and there's some kind of movie or TV documentary about him i haven't seen, it's called OR-7's Journey or something like that.

Here's a map of his travels

These are his grandchildren, sired by one of his sons

and here is some documentation of wolves in Oregon and California that includes, for example, that OR-7's daughter, OR-54, traveled over 8,000 miles around California and even into Nevada. This is her:

Anyway, that's the story of the time i bumped into a wild wolf in the woods!

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[sexiestpodcastcharacter]

Sexiest Podcast Character — Scripted Champion vs Unscripted Champion

[litl-rat-dude]

My friend shared their brainworms with me and now you all must suffer with me.

[curaree]

started playing the train game

[noyzinerd]

Does...Does He Know?...Is Anyone Going to Tell Him? 👀

How is it in the year of our Lord 2024, (LITERALLY YESTERDAY), I'm learning that we could be living in the timeline where Dylan O'Brien could possibly be Tyler Hoechlin's plus one to a (probably hypothetical) 7th Heaven 30 year reunion?

There's no way he randomly decided to watch a show from 1996, almost 30 years after it started airing, without knowing his former costar was in it, right?! RIGHT?!?!

FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK SOMEONE WHO HAS A TWITTER PLEASE ASK THIS MAN IF HE KNOWS TYLER HOECHLIN IS IN 7TH HEAVEN!!!!

[scribbleshanks]

best not to look at me right now

[mushi-shield]

people on tumblr really is sleeping on those great anime

wolf rain

Blue gender

Monster

Now and Then, Here and There

Big O

s-CRY-ed

Witch Hunter Robin

Paranoia Agent

Samurai 7

Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo

Trinity Blood

Blood+

Moribito - Guardian of the Spirit

Ristorante Paradiso

[artheresy]

Its thanksgiving and I am around family and yet I still bring silliness bc I love all these fuckers

Enjoy :D

[nart-is-a-monster]

[haldora]

"He threw back his head. He gave way to ringing laughter. He lifted a handful of water again and let it spill down my chest. He opened his mouth and for a moment I saw the flash of something very wrong and dangerous, teeth such as a wolf might have." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "[...] I saw him staring, beastlike, from his chair, as if some ravener had come into him and banished all his civilized faculties and left him thus, hungry, with glazed eyes and reddening mouth, the glittering blood finding its myriad little paths over the silky margin of his lips.

He rose, a drugged thing, and came towards me with a rhythm of movements that was alien and struck the coldest terror in my heart. His fingers flashed, closed, beckoned."

[canis-starwolf]

Some fan art for an amazing SBR AU fic I read on AO3 called Wolf Like Me by 3kanite!

1000% yall should drop by and read all their work, I love their stuff so much!

So this is for a werewolf AU of Steel Ball Run! And these are some of the wolves that appear in the fic:

Black wolf, pink background:

Hot Pants, described as a black/ dark wolf with yellow eyes

Blond wolf, blue background:

Diego Brando, described as an almost white or light colored wolf with a skinny, light build and blue eyes. I interpreted that as a light blond colored wolf

Brown wolf, green background:

Gyro Zeppeli, described as a large brownish wolf with a muscular build and green eyes

He was specifically said to have counter shading (darker top, lighter belly) so I added some lighter grays and creams to his coat for variety :)

Anyways, I really hope 3kanite likes this!! I genuinely LOVED your fic and since it was SBR AND WOLVES I had to draw this for you.

[mazeyphaedra]

There’s a moment where you see there’s still deep attraction here.

Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice // Brennan Lee Mulligan, Fantasy High: Junior Year // Lev St. Valentine, THIS IS HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU // Lev St. Valentine, HOPE YOU’RE WELL. PLEASE DON’T READ THIS. // Mitski, I’m Your Man // Siobhan Thompson, Brennan Lee Mulligan, & Ally Beardsley, Fantasy High: Junior Year // Trista Mateer, You Couldn’t Just Leave? // Steven Espada Dawson, Elegy for the Four Chambers of My Brother’s Heart // Natalie Diaz, Wolf OR-7 // Ally Beardsley & Brennan Lee Mulligan, Fantasy High: Junior Year

[monarch-of-weird-girlboy-nation]

Ok but Jason grace having to like kill ppl.

Killing demigods for Lupa that didn’t pass the tests. Killing for the legion to keep order.

He’s a kid and doesn’t rlly understand the gravity of his actions. People died all the time in the Wolf House and legion.

It was only fair… right?

He didn’t have to do it much any more now he was older, but no one ever said ‘hey that’s messed up’

Until he met the 7

[slowthinkingreader]

Also I'm crossposting these Japanese variant covers of the first four books by Yoshitaka Amano— before I forget to talk about them on here. Struggling to think of an artist whose aesthetics are better suited to these books!

[coldcutfruit]

Knight of Swords, Shin Hati