Curious Wolves

Damn I wish I'd had a camera.

So, today we brought a compressed gas cylinder back from the lab. We had to take it from our building to shipping, so we had tied a looped rope through the valve and then were just dragging it through the snow. Now, the wolves are usually pretty docile and aloof when people are around. They might turn their heads to look at you, and if you were going to walk into them they'd move, but one thing that they REALLY are is curious. They see this guy trudging along with a 5' metal tube behind him, and that warrants investigation.

First one wolf comes over to check things out. I stamp my feet a bit to scare him away from me, so he circles around to see the cylinder trailing behind me. Sniffing it and nipping it a little, he thinks it's a great game. Another joined him, then another. By the time I reached shipping I had 9 wolves trailing me, each probably 2 - 4" taller at the shoulder then a Labrador Retriever (sorry, most familiar dog to make the comparison to). It was a very funny spectacle. Every time the cylinder went over a bump, it would bang down with a "PING" sound and all the wolves would jump back...then rush up again to keep smelling. I think that it was the most fun they had all day :)

I promise, my camera will be on me from now on! I hate that I missed that picture.

**Oh, and in response to Katie's inquiry about the base location, I took the pictures below. The first one is of an NTDB map of the base. It's not great, because it's a glossy print, but the base is visible in the centre. The Arctic Ocean to the North and Dumbell Bay to the East. The map below is of higher quality (click it to see a large version) and although it's oriented with North to the ENE, you can see that we are very close to the Arctic Oean and other frozen water bodies. In fact, our runway juts out on a little spit of land into the water :) For those interested (and Hell, if you've read my blog this long, you MUST be interested, or just incredibly bored :P) the ice never truly breaks up here. In the summer, strong winds from the South 'may' push the ice offshore and make an area of open water, but it eventually comes back when the wind dies down.

Graham