Giving wolves a bad name

Ratna Raman 

A BIBLICAL parable speaks of the mean wolf that devoured a lamb drinking water downstream after accusing it of polluting his water source upstream. The expression: ‘A wolf in lamb’s clothing’ indicates a dangerous person, who has camouflaged his real identity to present a façade of innocence in order to prey upon the meek.

The lone wolf in fairy tales is usually male and personifies evil. One bad wolf swallows seven kids( baby goats)  home  alone without  mother goat. The wickedwolf in Little Red Riding Hood masquerades as the grandmother, possibly after having gobbled her up. The terrible wolf in Three Little Pigs huffs and puffs and blows down their houses in order to eat them. The biblical wolf, symbolising evil, lurks everywhere, but the wolf in the fairytale is killed off eventually, allowing for happiness to prevail in the world of stories.

In language, references to the wolf as a scary animal may have been an offshoot of times when the world was still densely forested and encounters  between  humans and  wolves  in the wild were not free from danger.

Eventually, eating large quantity of food at great speed met with disapproval. ‘Wolfing down food’ began to signify coarse dining etiquette. Guttural human sounds in extreme grief or pain were likened to ‘wolf howls’.

‘To keep the wolf from the door’ required adequate money to eat and live, the absence of which would summon loan sharks and moneylenders, demanding their due. 

Konkan Sen’s film A Death in the Gunj depicts a solitary wolf looming over the ditch, terrifying the viewer and the protagonist, although insensitive humans push him into ending his life.

 According to myth, Rome was founded by abandoned twins, Romulus  and  Remus. Generational family feuds  resulted in their being nursed  by a  she-wolf, recalling for us Gandhi’s tongue-in-cheek response about how Western ‘civilisation’ was indeed a very good idea. Possibly wolves are portrayed as vicious and violent because they were  Europe’s most ferocious animals once  the dragons had been vanquished. The werewolf, a creation of the human mind, easily represents the zenith of grotesque fabrication.

Kipling’s Jungle Book valourises the wolves that raised Mowgli because the tiger, Asia’s magnificent carnivore, can be appointed villain and deflect attention from humans who hunt animals to extinction.

 Watching wolves in a simulated habitat or on film allows us to discover that the wolf is a committed team player. Elegant and gorgeous, wolves protect, nurture and contribute to their pack. Social and gregarious, they interbreed with dogs, thereby enriching species and surroundings.

Psychotic, deranged individuals have been spawned in human civilisation with no contribution from other animal species. ‘Wolf-whistles’  directed at women demean, intimidate and are as offensive as ‘manspreading’.  

An armed Caucasian madman cannot earn the sobriquet of ‘lone wolf’ because no evidence of a wolf planning mass murder with enabling weaponry at its paw-tip exists. The Las Vegas massacre that generated extreme terror requires administrators to stare unblinkingly at the abyss at civilisation’s main gates. 

Ugly humans continue to make the world inequitable. It is time to accept responsibility and stop ‘crying wolf’ (telling lies) over despicable human acts. Let us ‘call a spade a spade’ and refrain from equating honourable wolves with beastly humans.