Gray Wolf & Raven  Yellowstone National Park             click to enlarge

You often seen wolves clustered around an elk or bison carcass that they’ve brought down, congratulating each other with high fives, and stuffing themselves until they can’t move. How are they always able to locate these animals so precisely to successfully make their kills.

The short answer is they use paid informants. These ravens are notorious C.I.’s or as they’re known in the trade, Confidential Informants. Because of their incredible mobility and their incredible greed, they are able to find that straggler elk or injured buffalo and will willingly give them up for a small price, usually a piece of liver or maybe a nice strip of tripe, and before you can say “OMG, Look at that!” the wolves are on them and it’s Thanksgiving day all over again.

This CI who is known by his cover as “Ratzo”, has just seen an injured spike left behind when the herd found out the pack was in residence and is in the process of dropping a dime on him right now. Unfortunately for the spike his days are numbered unless he can get to the free clinic and get that leg looked at. I gotta say it doesn’t sound promising however. As they say around here “So sad, Too bad for you Spike” but that’s the way nature works, here in nature. You scratch my fur and I’ll ruffle your feathers.

As we head into the Thanksgiving holidays we can all be thankful for several things, number one, we’re not a spike with a bum leg. Number two, we’re also not out in that cold snow. And number three, you’re fortunate enough to live in a time when you have an organization like “The Institute”, that center of knowledge, little known facts, and misinformation, to bring you the latest exclusive information on the workings of Mother Nature. It’s a new way of looking at the world around us and I’m sure we can all agree, that itself is worth the effort of reading these posts. Happy Holidays.