THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 31, 1994 TAG: 9410310042
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY ESTES THOMPSON, ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: EAST LAKE LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
The sun nearly had set, its fading beams touching only the tips of pine trees in the forest. As the temperature dropped with the light level, a faint howl rose from the woods.
The noise built, wave on wave of wailing, accented by yips and barks. At times it sounded like a football cheering section off in the distance, then alternating the composition so it seemed an aborigine tribe might leap from the forest at any moment.
Then it stopped. All that was left was darkness. It was very quiet. And dark.
``It's like magic,'' said Bonnie Strawser, a wildlife interpretive specialist, or guide, at the 118,000-acre Alligator River Wildlife Refuge.
``Good eerie. It was like a haunted house,'' said Taylor Lea, 15, a Rose High School student who came from Greenville for a Halloween-season wolf howl in the refuge run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The howling came from endangered red wolves that are bred at the refuge. There are 22 wolves in pens at the end of Sandy Ridge Road, five miles off the nearest paved road in Dare County, and 37 wolves fitted with radio collars roaming wild.
Wolves were brought to North Carolina from Washington in 1987 in a government program to save the rare animals. The shy wolf, which resembles a skinny German shepherd dog and has a red tint to its coat, rarely shows its face in the wild and can only be glimpsed in the 50-by-50-foot pens.
For the past several years, the refuge has sponsored an event called a ``howl.'' There is a Halloween howl, a Christmas howl and an Earth Day howl for the public. Groups can arrange to ``howl up the wolves'' by calling the refuge office in Manteo.
A group of 24 students from Rose High School visited the refuge Thursday night, the day before the 1994 Halloween howl, hiked to the wolf pens and cooked hot dogs over a campfire.
Strawser showed the students how to howl, disappearing into the darkness away from the fire, throwing back her head and letting a low-toned howl emerge from her throat. She sounded more like a wolf than the wolves did.
``It isn't a `hoo.' You have to put your head back and let it come from your throat,'' she instructed. ``Attempt to force a crack in your voice. I don't know why, but they seem to respond to a crack in your voice.''
When the penned wolf pack off in the darkness responded to Strawser's three howls, the students' mouthed dropped open in unison as they stared in amazement. Then a group of girls tried it, howling convincingly and bringing response from the pack.
``It sounds like people hiding out in the woods,'' said Kirsten Holtvedt, 15.
Occasionally, people can get a response from a small pack of wild wolves in the refuge. But the most predictable response comes from the wolves in the breeding pens.
There is a howling etiquette among wolves. They just don't strike up a howl.
The dominant male, called the alpha male, starts the howl. Then others join in. Three or four wolves can sound like a dozen.
``Their howling is a territorial statement to let other wolves know they're there,'' said Rae Braudaway, a volunteer wolf caretaker working on an environmental studies degree. She lives in a cabin near the wolf pens and feeds and observes the captive animals.
``I believe they howl because it's fun. If they're howling in a group and two are on the same note, one will change pitch. It's like a personal signature.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by DREW C. WILSON, Staff
These red wolves are being bred at the Alligator River Wildlife
Refuge.
by CNB