acquainted with the habits of beasts, saw evidence of canine occupation of the termite mound—droppings, bones, tunnels of ingress and egress—and instructed that a
machan
be built in an overspreading tree nearby. Armed with his dependable twenty-bore Westley Richards rifle, the Reverend sat breathlessly in the
machan
and concentrated his field glasses on the main entrance to the den. The Reverend Singh was not one to believe in ghosts, other than the Holy Spirit, perhaps, and he expected nothing more remarkable than an albino wolf or perhaps a sloth bear gone white with age or dietary deficiency.
Dusk filtered up from the forest floor. Shadows pooled in the undergrowth, and then an early moon rose up pregnant from the horizon to soften them. Langurs whooped in the near distance, cicadas buzzed, a hundred species of beetles, moths and biting insects flapped round the Reverend’s ears, but he held rigid and silent, his binoculars fixed on the entrance to the mound. And then suddenly a shape emerged, the triangular head of a wolf, followed by a smaller canine head and then something else altogether, with a neatly rounded cranium and foreshortened face. The wolf—the dam—stretched herself and slunk off into the undergrowth, followed by a pair of wolf cubs and the two other creatures, which were too long-legged and rangy to be canids; that was clear at a glance. Monkeys, the Reverend thought at first, or apes of some sort. But then, even though they were moving swiftly on all fours, the Reverend could see, to his amazement, that these weren’t monkeys at all, or wolves or ghosts either.
DENNING
S HE NO LONGER BOTHERED with a notepad or the pocket tape recorder she’d once used to document the telling yip or strident howl. These were the accoutrements of civilization, and civilization got in the way of the kind of freedom she required if she was ever going to break loose of the constraints that had shackled field biologists from the beginning. Even her clothes seemed to get in the way, but she was sensible enough of the laws of the community to understand that they were necessary, at least for now. Still, she made a point of wearing the same things continuously for weeks on end—sans underwear or socks—in the expectation that her scent would invest them, and the scent of the pack too. How could she hope to gain their confidence if she smelled like the prize inside a box of detergent?
One afternoon toward the end of March, as she lay stretched out beneath a weak pale disc of a sun, trying to ignore the cold breeze and concentrate on the doings of the pack—they were excavating a den in the vacant quadrangle of former dairy pasture that was soon to become the J and K blocks of the ever-expanding development—she heard a car slow on the street a hundred yards distant and lifted her head lazily, as the dogs did, to investigate. It had been a quiet morning and a quieter afternoon, A.1. and Snout, as the alpha couple, looking on placidly as Decidedly, Barely and Factitious alternated the digging and a bulldog from B Street she hadn’t yet named lay drooling in the dark wet earth that flew from the lip of the burrow. Snout had been chasing cars off and on all morning—to the dogs, automobiles were animate and ungovernable, big unruly ungulates that needed to be curtailed—and she guessed that the fortyish man climbing out of the sedan and working his tentative way across the lot had come to complain, because that was all her neighbors ever did: complain.
And that was a shame. She really didn’t feel like getting into all that right now—explaining herself, defending the dogs, justifying, forever justifying—because for once she’d gotten into the rhythm of dogdom, found her way to the sacred place where to lie flat in thesun and breathe in the scents of fresh earth, dung, sprouting grass, was enough of an accomplishment for an entire day. Children were in school, adults at work. Peace reigned over the
machan
be built in an overspreading tree nearby. Armed with his dependable twenty-bore Westley Richards rifle, the Reverend sat breathlessly in the
machan
and concentrated his field glasses on the main entrance to the den. The Reverend Singh was not one to believe in ghosts, other than the Holy Spirit, perhaps, and he expected nothing more remarkable than an albino wolf or perhaps a sloth bear gone white with age or dietary deficiency.
Dusk filtered up from the forest floor. Shadows pooled in the undergrowth, and then an early moon rose up pregnant from the horizon to soften them. Langurs whooped in the near distance, cicadas buzzed, a hundred species of beetles, moths and biting insects flapped round the Reverend’s ears, but he held rigid and silent, his binoculars fixed on the entrance to the mound. And then suddenly a shape emerged, the triangular head of a wolf, followed by a smaller canine head and then something else altogether, with a neatly rounded cranium and foreshortened face. The wolf—the dam—stretched herself and slunk off into the undergrowth, followed by a pair of wolf cubs and the two other creatures, which were too long-legged and rangy to be canids; that was clear at a glance. Monkeys, the Reverend thought at first, or apes of some sort. But then, even though they were moving swiftly on all fours, the Reverend could see, to his amazement, that these weren’t monkeys at all, or wolves or ghosts either.
DENNING
S HE NO LONGER BOTHERED with a notepad or the pocket tape recorder she’d once used to document the telling yip or strident howl. These were the accoutrements of civilization, and civilization got in the way of the kind of freedom she required if she was ever going to break loose of the constraints that had shackled field biologists from the beginning. Even her clothes seemed to get in the way, but she was sensible enough of the laws of the community to understand that they were necessary, at least for now. Still, she made a point of wearing the same things continuously for weeks on end—sans underwear or socks—in the expectation that her scent would invest them, and the scent of the pack too. How could she hope to gain their confidence if she smelled like the prize inside a box of detergent?
One afternoon toward the end of March, as she lay stretched out beneath a weak pale disc of a sun, trying to ignore the cold breeze and concentrate on the doings of the pack—they were excavating a den in the vacant quadrangle of former dairy pasture that was soon to become the J and K blocks of the ever-expanding development—she heard a car slow on the street a hundred yards distant and lifted her head lazily, as the dogs did, to investigate. It had been a quiet morning and a quieter afternoon, A.1. and Snout, as the alpha couple, looking on placidly as Decidedly, Barely and Factitious alternated the digging and a bulldog from B Street she hadn’t yet named lay drooling in the dark wet earth that flew from the lip of the burrow. Snout had been chasing cars off and on all morning—to the dogs, automobiles were animate and ungovernable, big unruly ungulates that needed to be curtailed—and she guessed that the fortyish man climbing out of the sedan and working his tentative way across the lot had come to complain, because that was all her neighbors ever did: complain.
And that was a shame. She really didn’t feel like getting into all that right now—explaining herself, defending the dogs, justifying, forever justifying—because for once she’d gotten into the rhythm of dogdom, found her way to the sacred place where to lie flat in thesun and breathe in the scents of fresh earth, dung, sprouting grass, was enough of an accomplishment for an entire day. Children were in school, adults at work. Peace reigned over the
Similar Books
