A dish served cold

I was pleased to read recently in El Pais that wolves have returned to the Madrid region, but began to hesitate a little upon one comment: “they are what we call good wolves”. My imagination immediately swung into action and alarm bells started ringing. Doesn’t a ‘good wolf’ sound a bit too much like a ‘pleasant panther’ or a ‘gracious grizzly’? Does the phrase, perhaps, make the animals sound a little too amiable? A ‘good wolf’ almost seems like a ‘good buddy’, to the extent that you start to think about hitting town on a Saturday night with your new-found furry friend, wolfing down a few beers, and then indulging in some embarrassing wolf-whistling, at which assumedly any ‘good wolf’ would be highly adept.

English idioms don’t do the wolf any favours. ‘A wolf in sheep’s clothing’, ‘to keep the wolf from the door’, ‘to cry wolf’ – none of these are teeming with positivity, and that’s without even touching on ‘werewolf’ or ‘wolfman’. Clearly, we don’t want to panic, but the headline of the wolf piece states, “Wolves return to Madrid 70 years after being hunted out”. So let’s get this straight: we hunted them down, but now they’re back. I say this isn’t about nature or chance; this is about revenge.

The article also mentions that the wolves have previously been “making sorties over the mountains” from Segovia. Sorties? So they’ve been checking us out? Probing our strengths and weaknesses before… an invasion, perhaps? To compound matters, we are then told, “their presence is a clear indicator that the wolf has found everything it needs to settle in the Madrid region”. Again, I could be reading too much between the lines, but that suggests that each wolf has already managed to obtain a DNI, an abono for the Metro, and even more remarkably, a job. You would have thought sending photos for the DNI or abono might have given the game away, although wolves have been known to dress up, particularly to fool children, in the past.

"And by Christmas, the Plaza Mayor will be ours!"   Photo: flickr (CC) Serge Melki

Apparently, the wolves have already claimed the lives of 28 sheep and a cow. (You have to feel some sympathy for the lone cow, which must have been in the wrong place at the wrong time when a wolf cub said, “but Dad, do we have to have sheep again?”) In overall numbers, it’s too few to worry about, but it does mean that wolves are not yet ready to sit down at a table with a knife and fork, no matter how ‘good’ they might be. Improvements to Madrid’s natural areas have also resulted in the return of the vulture and the otter. Can the authorities not see, with vultures, wolves and otters, that the animal world has the tactical advantage of air, land, and river forces?

It’s not clear whether the vultures and otters are ‘good’, but to put matters in perspective, imagine sharing your sofa and watching TV with our three potential new friends. The way things are going, it could happen. With an otter, the biggest fear might be that it gets stuck between the cushions, because otters have that sort of shape. A vulture may well perch on the arm of the sofa, but I guess on the pecking and tearing front there would be little worry unless you were already dead. And a wolf? Well, let’s just say don’t get into an argument about channel-hopping. If the wolf wants to watch his cousins on an animal documentary, simply nod and don’t make any rapid movements. Invasions and revenge aside, as a Spanish friend pointed out, there is one other possibility. Perhaps the wolves are just arriving in time for a famous brand of turrón at Christmas?

Comments

[Publicado por: UnCafelito]

Next will be "El Oso y el Madroño".