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"Almost Wild"
An Insider's View of the Western North Carolina Nature Center
By Chris Eleazer
It was like stepping into another world. The glass-lined room was filled with an eerie red glow - the kind that makes you just a little afraid to turn your back.
A pair of wide yellow eyes glowed orange in the strange light. I knew they were yellow because I'd seen them before - fed them before. They belonged to Doofus, the screech owl, a favorite of mine.
He laid his tiny ear tufts back against his wide-eyed head as he hopped and flapped from branch to branch in his enclosure. It gave him a fierce, agitated look, which was really very funny considering he is only a 6-inch bird. That is what I love about screech owls. They are little bundles of personality and feathers - expressions with feet.
WNC Nature Center
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But, Doofus was not alone. The room was alive with creatures. Next-door to Doofus was Ahab, the Green Heron. Polly the opossum and Rosebud the skunk occupied enclosures to the left, and a host of frogs, flying squirrels and crickets carried out their lives on the right. This was no ordinary room. This was Nocturnal Hall.
Nocturnal Hall is one of the most interesting exhibits at the Western North Carolina Nature Center in Asheville. During the day, a red fluorescent light allows visitors to see animals that, in the wild, only show themselves at night. The animals can't see that particular wavelength, perceiving only their comfortable darkness.
When the Nature Center closes for the day, an employee flips off the red light and turns on regular white lights. As far as the critters are concerned, the sun has very suddenly come up and they accordingly go to sleep. It may not be the life they would have experienced in the wild, but for many creatures, it is the only one they have a hope of surviving.
Many of the animals that call the Nature Center home do so because they would not survive long in the wild. Most of the birds are either blind in one eye or can no longer fly and therefore cannot hunt effectively on their own. Many of the larger mammals were victims of car and dog accidents or grew up as exotic "pets" and had to be confiscated. The Nature Center gives these creatures a second chance at life. The challenge is to give them as normal a life as possible under the circumstances. They must be tame enough to be cooperative and wild enough to retain their distinctiveness and dignity.
This is most difficult with the animals in Nocturnal Hall. Due to spatial limitations, each species has enough room to move about and exercise comfortably, but no more. Their enclosures are made to look as natural as possible with painted backdrops, pine straw and leaves as bedding, rocks and logs to climb on, but, understandably, this just doesn't compare to the real outside. The animals get used to their small quarters and once every corner has been investigated thoroughly, they get bored. This leads to bad habits such as pacing.
Rosebud the Skunk
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Rosebud, the striped skunk, is especially bad about pacing. She waddles back and forth along the back wall of her habitat in a trance-like state while visitors ooh and ahh at her through the glass.
This isn't natural for Rosebud, and besides, it looks funny. So, the Center has created an enrichment program to work on finding and making toys and puzzles to keep the animals occupied in ways that mimic their normal behavior. An animal behaving naturally is a happier, healthier animal, and is much more interesting to look at than a fuzzy zombie.
Most animal actions are in some way or other associated with procuring food. One of the most interesting foods for the Nocturnal Hall crew is crickets. Seven or eight live crickets dumped in the straw bring about an instant transformation. Rosebud suddenly begins to think like a skunk and roots around her habitat, poking her nose into the straw and digging through it like a child at a carnival game. No cranny is left unsorted, no stick unturned.
On cleaning days, she is taken out into one of the big outdoor cages to climb and dig for mealworms in the sand pit. She loves to dig. The problem is getting her out of her habitat. I am firmly convinced that the designer of her enclosure forgot to check the "user-friendly" manual. Small animals adore small spaces and Rosebud's favorite part of her house is the small, narrow crevice she sleeps in. She doesn't appreciate being picked up, and at the first sight of a keeper, she makes a mad dash for this crevice. Unless one is skilled in the arts of bribery and sneakiness, she is virtually inextricable.
I remember the first day I was asked to remove her by myself. I readily agreed, thinking, "How hard can it be?"
On my way to unlock her outside cage, I ran into Tony Dills, assistant animal curator. A stocky man with iron gray hair, his stern face disguises the good-natured, hard worker that he is. He promised to help me open the door when I came out, so I went back to collect my furry charge. My charge, however, did not want to be collected.
She saw me open the door and bolted back into that awful crevice. Luckily for me, her scent glands had been removed so I didn't have to come out wearing 'Eau de Skunk.' I couldn't pull her out, so I tried bribing her by placing food in a trail from the mouth of the crack into the middle of the enclosure. She ate the first few pieces, but treated my clumsy attempts to grab her with great disgust and again turned tail and retreated.
What made it worse was the crowd of people watching. My lack of success was embarrassing enough. It doesn't take much for people to yell "abuse" and I figured for the sake of Rosebud's sanity and mine, I'd wait until they left. I closed the door and reopened it a few minutes later just in time to see that ridiculous, fluffy tail disappearing around the corner.
Several minutes later, Dills came to find out why I wasn't there yet. He found me crouched inside the habitat, peanut in hand, feeling very frustrated.
"Well, I waited out there for you,'' he said, "and you never showed!"
I looked at him helplessly, "How do I get her out?"
He stood there a minute, considering, then reached over and handed me a small broom. "Here."
"Oh . . . okay." I said, not sure if I was grateful for this or not.
"I left that door unlocked for you,'' he said. "You can just shove it open with your elbow."
"Okay, thanks Tony." I sighed as he left. "All right Rosebud, come on out now. . come on . . . . come on. . . will you come on?!" Finally I managed to pry/sweep/block her out of her security hole despite her butting and scrambling, grabbed her around her plump middle, and lifted her out of the habitat.
"You could have made that easier for both of us, you know." I chuckled at her insulted expression as I carried her outside. I wondered if she really needed much more exercise for the day.
Ensuring semi-wildness is not the only issue the Center faces. The animals also have to be tame enough to work with. Often, this seems oxymoronic from the visitor's point of view. These are "wild creatures" after all, and are thrillingly frightening. When people hear that we actually go in with some of them, their jaws drop. (I always rather enjoy that part.) Their visions of wolves run along the lines of a sequence from Marty Stouffer's "Wild America" program:
A deer and her fawn are standing in a shadowy glade until they are suddenly ambushed by a pack of ravenous wolves. They are after the fawn and a movie-quality chase ensues until the fawn either escapes or is killed. If it is caught, the calculating bunch of wolves then clusters together, snarling and arguing over the meal.
Most people see wolves as enormous, bloodthirsty dogs with nothing better to do than chase things down and eat them. This Little Red Riding-Hood philosophy is what led nearly the entire gray wolf population to be eradicated in the wild by "hunters" who often used cruel means such as wolf baiting, steel jaw traps and torture to kill them slowly.
Only just in time did we realize the vital importance of the species in the balance of nature. Through captive breeding and reintroduction programs, the populations have begun to rise again in protected areas like Yellowstone National Park, parts of Canada and coastal North Carolina.
Given the gray wolf's rather dramatic history, visitors to the Nature Center find the relationships between our wolves and their keepers very hard to believe. On Tuesdays, Kristen Hillegas and Lew Haight take care of the predators, and I usually get to go along.
Hillegas is one of the rotating keepers. She works in every area of the Center. A tall, slim woman with curly, sandy hair pulled back in a ponytail under her cap, she knows each of the animals by name and personality.
Haight is a weekly volunteer in his late 60's with combed-over white hair, a slight stoop and an eternal twinkle in his eyes.
The large concrete night house looks like a storage shed from the outside. Hillegas unlocks and opens the heavy doors. Our arrival is greeted with excited whines and yelps, accompanied by the rhythmic click-clicking of the voltage box feeding the electric fence.
A pair of large doggie-paws plant themselves on the bars of the window next to my shoulder and two golden/brown eyes beg for their breakfast. The shaggy silver-gray head is bigger then mine, but when I get outside to the chain-link night run, the three wolves come barreling up like puppies, brushing themselves against the fence, eager for attention.
Cheyenne the Tease
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Cheyenne, one of the females, throws herself down on her back, her side pressed up to the fence to have her belly rubbed. The wolves remind me of my Australian shepherd, but I wouldn't want to meet them without the fence between us. A wolf is not a dog, even in captivity, though looks can be deceiving.
Haight laughs at their antics and baby talks to them. "Hey Jenna! How'se girl, huh? Take it easy Caruso, you'll get your breakfast soon, hang on, hang on. . ."
The wolves have to be trapped before they are fed so their lot can be cleaned and their meat blocks set out for them. They are shut in the night run, a long, chain-link corridor that dead-ends in the concrete night house. A metal sliding door divides the run in two.
Caruso, the big male, is ecstatic, bouncing up and down on two legs, dashing around his end of the run and flinging himself up against the door and the fence, making rumbling yowls whenever anyone passes by. He is six feet tall when he stands up, making him a very impressive sight. His behavior, though, is more like an enormous dog than a wild animal.
The two females, Cheyenne and Jenna, are on the other side of the door, running up and down the length of their end. Wolves have a strict social structure. A male and female, called the alphas after the first letter in the Greek alphabet, lead the pack with dictator-like authority. They eat first, get the best seats and sleeping places and freely administer discipline. The pecking order continues down the pack until there is only one member left. This wolf is not allowed dominance of any sort. It is the scum of the pack, the lowest of the low, and is often bullied by other pack members needing to assert themselves. This is the omega wolf, after the last letter in the Greek alphabet.
Jenna the Boss
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The three wolves at the Nature Center came from a captive breeding facility and were allowed to imprint on humans for ease in handling them. Normally, Caruso and Jenna, the alpha male and female, are shut up together to give Cheyenne a bit of peace and a little extra attention. She is the omega wolf, and the other two have no qualms about reminding her often with snarls and nips. This visit was no exception. Our rounds on their forested hillside are serenaded by an intermittent cacophony of yelps, growls and snarls as Jenna bullies Cheyenne, despite our yells of admonition.
After the third or fourth quarrel, I go to see what the ruckus was all about. I watch Cheyenne go from belly-up in submission to advancing mischievously on Jenna, pawing at her with lowered head like a pesky little sister. The three wolves are, in fact from the same litter. Jenna, like a true sibling, lashes out and the noise begins anew. Whether Cheyenne is trying to make-up or tease, I don't know. But I think she asked for what she got.
Each wolf gets half a block of meat, frozen so they have to gnaw on it longer. Cheyenne and Jenna are let out first, and they run to grab their share. As soon as they are out, Hillegas yells for me to open the door for Caruso, who by this time is trying to dig his way through it. He charges up the run and out into the lot.
I return to Hillegas who has finally figured out how to make the water pump work. Suddenly, our attention is grabbed by Cheyenne who is trotting distractedly back and forth along the fence near the run, whining like a two-year old that hasn't gotten her way. Caruso had stolen her meat, and stood with both blocks between his front paws growling at her between mouthfuls every time she passed.
Haight goes to get Cheyenne another piece, and has trouble opening the door to give it to her, as she keeps whimpering and pawing at the lock. Finally, she moves enough for him to slip it in, and she carries it off to her corner.
The mission statement for the WNC Nature Center is "to educate the public to the natural history and ecology of the Southern Appalachians." The staff accomplishes this through the interactive nature lab with lots of things to touch and look at, and with creative, hands-on educational programs for school children.
Pat Lance, the Nature Center Director, has visions of enlarging and improving this scheme in the upcoming years. He says his goal is to "grow and become more self-sustaining." He dreams of building a new visitors center, enlarging Nocturnal Hall and bringing in traveling animal exhibits so visitors can compare the exotic zoo life they see often to the native wonders of the south-eastern US. The Center keeps only native species, and many of these are very secretive so that even local people never get to see them up close.
It is hard sometimes not to make pets out of the animals we work with so closely. A tamed animal allows one certain liberties like petting and hand-feeding that are as much fun as they are unbelievable. It is also easier to work with in the case of vet-care and habitat cleaning.
On the other hand, it also gives the keepers a false sense of security. A wild animal can never be truly tamed. There is a streak of independence and spirit there that no amount of dog biscuits and peanut butter can overcome. Our wild friends may be friendly, but they are also unpredictable and will turn quickly on the hand that feeds them if their boundaries of respect and comfort are overstepped.
In addition, there is a loss of dignity in a tamed wild thing. The wolf begging for its dinner at the gate leaves something to be desired in comparison with the wolf running down a deer in the Montana forests. A cougar that acts like a house cat is just not as awe-inspiring as a cougar that acts like a cougar.
Satch, one of the Cougars
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Lance tells the story of Shalee, one of the Center's first cougars. She arrived as a cub and spent most of her 18 years in one of the concrete and wire cages that were standard up into the sixties. Between 1989 and 1998, however, the predator habitat was completely renovated, modeled after the animals' natural environments. When the cougar habitat was finished, Shalee and the other two cougars were caught and prepared for release into their new home.
The Nature Center was closed for a few hours so the entire staff could be there for the event. People lined the boardwalk in front of the habitat. The doors to the three traps were opened and one by one, the cougars sauntered out into the sunshine.
Shalee seemed to think she had died and gone to heaven. She sniffed and nibbled at the grass, rubbed her neck and tawny sides against the tree bark and rolled delightedly in the piles of pine straw.
The staff was ecstatic. Recalls Lance, "There was not a dry eye on that entire boardwalk."
Somewhere, deep down, there is a connection with humans that only an animal can make, something that touches us emotionally, that commands us to sit down, watch and unwind. Even a creature as simple as a goldfish lazing around its two-gallon tank is enough to make us pause our daily grind long enough to smile. Shalee didn't really know what it was to be a cougar until she had the space to behave like one.
There is a balance between wildness and tameness that retains an animal's freedom of movement and sense of pride, that gives the public an accurate view of what they came to see, and yet lets the keepers do their jobs effectively. If we can find that balance, I believe then, the Nature Center will have truly succeeded.
See also archived Bonner reflections by A. Dolezal and B. Shaw
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