Moments later Chris arrived, an athletic man in his late forties, about 6 feet tall, with short greying hair.
‘What do you think, Jon?’ he said, getting straight to the point. ‘He’s not happy at all, is he?’
‘No,’ I agreed. ‘We certainly need to have a closer look at him.’
‘Can we get him in, Chris?’ James asked.
‘No problem, give me a moment.’
He disappeared round to the side of the brick building, and a few minutes later the far-right pen door opened and we could hear Chris calling to Marty. The wolf responded surprisingly quickly, trotting gingerly over to the open door, with the other two wolves following behind. It suddenly dawned on me that Marty was the alpha male, which would make it easier to separate him. As Marty got to the entrance of his enclosure, he hesitated for a moment, obviously confused by this change to his normal routine, but after a brief interlude sniffing around, he slowly padded inside. Chris was obviously watching and waiting behind the door, because as soon as Marty had disappeared from view, it shut behind him.
‘That was pretty straightforward,’ I said to James. ‘So Marty is the alpha, is he?’
‘He sure is, and quite the dominant one.’
We headed back around the building, following Chris’s direction through a dark 3-foot-wide corridor. The three wolves’ cages ran down the right-hand side, the left wall was exposed red brick, and the floor was polished concrete, with a gutter on the left running along the length of the building. To the left of the door that led into Marty’s cage was the pulley system, which controlled the outside door to the cage. Chris had just finished securing it as we walked in. We could now hear Marty snarling and growling.
‘He’s not happy with us,’ Chris observed.
‘Yeah, but you can’t really blame him,’ said James. ‘He must be in one hell of a lot of pain and doesn’t realize we’re trying to help.’
‘That’s for sure,’ I said.
‘OK, so what’s the plan?’ Chris asked. ‘Do you have a dart gun or is it still out of action?’
‘I was telling James, ours has been decommissioned. I’ve got a guy in Somerset on standby if we need him, but he can’t get here till two. I’ve made an injection pole that would allow me to inject from about a metre away, but –’ I looked at Marty prowling around the cage complaining vociferously – ‘there’s still too much space in here for me to be able to do him like that. I don’t suppose there’s any way of confining him in a smaller space, is there?’
‘Not really …’ Chris replied, looking at his watch. It was now nearly eleven. ‘But two o’clock is a long time to wait.’
We all stood there for a moment in silence, pondering a solution we were sure existed somewhere. Chris was the first to break the silence.
‘Do you remember that mattress that we used for the impala to stop them hurting themselves when we blood-sampled them?’
‘Yeah, what about it?’ James replied.
‘Couldn’t we use it to pin Marty into a corner so that Jon could quickly inject him?’
Chris’s suggestion hung in the air for a moment as James and I processed the full implications of what he was proposing. The anguished growling emanating from the cage next to us served as a reminder of what this notion entailed.
‘Oh, I see.’ James breathed out through his teeth. ‘I guess that could work. What do you think, Jon?’
‘Um, to be honest, it doesn’t sound the safest plan I’ve ever heard. It’d be great if it worked, but just now I can only see the dangers and pitfalls.’
‘Yeah, but don’t you think Marty will just cower under the bench, rather than come out fighting? He’s really not well enough, and this growling is just a kind of protest, isn’t it?’ Chris was clearly set on the plan, and I could see James coming round to the same idea.
‘I think you’re probably right,’ he said. ‘We can at least give it a go. I mean, what have we got to lose – other than an arm, I mean, and the risk of a major wound? Where’s the mattress?’
‘I think Jenna knows where it is.’
Chris reached for his radio to ask.
‘I think it’s in the storeroom,’ came the crackling reply. ‘Do you need a hand with it?’
‘Thanks, Jenna, that would be great. I’ll meet you there in a minute – if you’re free now?’
‘Sure.’ With that Chris disappeared.
‘Are you really sure about this?’ I asked James hesitantly, after he’d gone.
‘Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be fine … Maybe if you just stood ready by the outside door, then if there are any problems you can just open the hatch? If he does decide to attack, it’ll be a fear aggression, so with the door open, I’m sure he’ll just want to run away.’ James sounded confident enough, but I wasn’t sure whether he was trying to convince me or himself.
I didn’t quite know what to do. Surely the sensible thing would be to veto this plan now, or at least urge them to await the arrival of my colleague Dave, who would certainly see sense. On the other hand, a part of me was beginning to be persuaded by it. I mean, could a maned wolf really be much worse than a particularly aggressive large dog? And with the injection pole, we didn’t need to restrain him much: the mattress should be enough of a shield, shouldn’t it? I am ever the optimist, but that can be a dangerous attitude in a situation like this. If it went wrong, it could go spectacularly wrong – a severe mauling, injuries, maybe even death. Were those genuine risks or was I exaggerating them? I just didn’t know. Well, if you don’t know, then err on the side of caution, I told myself. But if we don’t do it this way, then we’ve got a three-hour wait and that could simply be too long for Marty in his current state. Besides, I’m sure James was right, and if things started to go wrong, I could always open the hatch, and Marty would be sure to run off. All these thoughts were whirling around my mind when Chris and Jenna returned with the mattress. I could see that they were all still committed to the plan.
‘What do you need it for?’ Jenna asked as she and Chris placed it in the corridor.
‘You don’t want to know,’ James replied, ‘but if anything happens, just tell our wives we love them.’ He and Chris laughed.
‘What?’ Jenna said with shock and concern.
‘Don’t worry, I’m joking, it’ll be fine. We just need to inject Marty.’
‘I’ll just pop to the car and get the injection pole and my kit,’ I said, decisively committed now to Chris and James’s plan.
‘I might go and get us some gauntlets to protect our hands,’ suggested Chris.
‘Yeah, good idea, and maybe grab my Barbour jacket as well.’
‘Oh yeah, I’ll bring mine as well. Zipped up with the collar up, it’ll cover our necks.’
‘You guys are nuts!’ Jenna exclaimed.
Were we really going to do this? I pondered, having second thoughts as we headed back to my car.
A few minutes later all the equipment was lined up along the corridor, Chris had returned with the Barbours and gauntlets, and Jenna had disappeared, too anxious to watch.
‘How much do they weigh?’ I asked as I selected my drug concoction.
‘About 25 kg,’ Chris replied.
‘Wow, is that all? Given their size, I thought it’d be more than that.’
‘Yeah they are tall, but have a very slender frame.’
‘OK, thanks.’ I calculated my dose and then drew up the combination into a syringe. I discarded the needle, attached the syringe to the extension pipe and filled the pipe with the drug. Refilling the syringe with saline, I reconnected it to the pipe and depressed the plunger until the drug was down to the far end of the pipe where the needle was. With the pole syringe primed, if I pushed the needle into the wolf and depressed the syringe, the drug would be injected into him.
As I was occupying myself with this, James and Chris were readying themselves; wearing their Barbours, gauntlets and Australian bush hats, only their faces were exposed.