Mid-Summer Fun Guide: Howling Woods Farm
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Contrary to my recurring nightmare circa '81 to '88, wolves do not want to eat me. They don't want to stalk me or chase me. If their lonesome, nighttime howls cause my spine to ice over, and the caveman cortex of my brain to search for some long-suppressed survival instinct (file not found), that's on me, not the wolf.
$20 (donation) | 46 miles/70 minutes away | Howling Woods Farm, 1371 W. Veterans Hwy., Jackson, N.J., 732-551-4556, howlingwoods.org.
Contrary to my recurring nightmare circa ’81 to ’88, wolves do not want to eat me. They don’t want to stalk me or chase me. If their lonesome, nighttime howls cause my spine to ice over, and the caveman cortex of my brain to search for some long-suppressed survival instinct (file not found), that’s on me, not the wolf.
It’s one of the first things they tell you on the tour at Howling Woods wolf sanctuary: Wolves, generally speaking, do not give a crap about people. They like to stay away from human beings, especially the ones they don’t know.
From the moment our tour group entered the wolves’ pen via a double-secure airlock-style arrangement, we could sense a prevailing culture of aloofness. We looked at the wolves. They did not look at us. Instead of being cripplingly afraid, we suddenly wished we were cool enough to be acknowledged by these majestic, spookily adorable creatures. We reached out to touch their silvery fur, to scratch between their fuzzy ears. They allowed this the way a branch permits a bird to land on it.
They were willing to sit near us, in the needly shade of a conifer, probably only because we were accompanied by humans known to be of use, namely Howling Woods staffers, aka the people who shelter them and feed them and reward them with cheese for doing the right thing. Sometimes the right thing is to stand on a wooden platform for five minutes and pose for photos while the tourists shakily pat their heads. Once that’s done, small blocks of cheese are tossed and snapped out of the air.
I see some of you have your hands up.
Yep, these are real wolves. Well, they’re technically wolf-dogs, which is to say they’re a mix of undetermined percentages. There’s obviously wolf blood in their veins, just a generation or two back. They have the wolf’s squinty, hunters’ eyes, the arctic coats, the teeth as thick and white as well-sucked candy canes.
Yeah, we were right there in the same enclosure as the wolves. Unlike their more wild brothers and sisters roaming the Canadian tundra and Saudi Arabian desert, these guys (most are male) have become somewhat socialized to the presence of people: more shy than aggressive, more bored than bloodthirsty.
The ones at Howling Woods are docile enough to appear in movies and commercials without eating the actors. According to our tour guide, trainers sometimes affix rubber bands to the wolves’ mouths to make it look like they’re snarling, because these doggies are just the snuggliest little pack hunters in the world who wouldn’t hurt a fly (but they’d eat your chickens if they could). A few of these wolves appeared in the 2010 Nicolas Cage movie The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, but none would speak on the record about it.
Good question. Sadly, these animals usually end up in sanctuaries because people who once thought it would be cool to live with a wolf finally realize it’s actually sort of insane. Wolfs are big, heavy, territory-marking, raw-meat-eating predators. They make terrible pets. When an animal shelter gets a wolf/wolf-dog they either place it in a sanctuary or put it down. Howling Woods takes in new ones when it can, but right now they’re close to capacity with 20 on their property. They’re funded mostly by donations and a little gift shop that sells statues, books and cute-as-hell little wolf dolls made out of fur that was shed by the residents.
I bought a shirt adorned with the likeness of Howling Woods’ alpha wolf Samson — a dark-furred, yellow-eyed wolf/malamute mix who’s as soft and cuddly as a teddy bear and as big as a tiny grizzly. If he were to stand upright on his hind legs he’d be taller than a person and that person would pee himself.
Understandable, but unwarranted. Once you’ve shared a space with a wolf, once you’ve tried to lock your gaze with his and come to an interspecies understanding, you realize: There’s no reason to be afraid. The wolves could probably eat me if they wanted to, but they don’t want to. They don’t care about me one way or the other.
