Montana man lives with wolves
By VINCE DEVLIN
Missoulian Sunday, November 20, 2005
POTOMAC, Mont. — On a cold November day, Carl Bock entered the double-gated 10-acre enclosure where his pack of 10 wolves lives. Instantly, half the pack is there to investigate the people Bock has brought into their territory.
Wizzy, the alpha male who began the kill of another wolf in the pack to ascend to lead status — the rest of the pack hangs back until a winner is obvious, then moves in to finish off the vanquished — is first on the scene.
“Be careful,” Bock cautions. “You’ll be 2.5 hours before Wizzy burns out on belly rubs.”
Indeed, Wizzy seems a lamb in wolf’s clothing. The only danger from this wolf appears to be getting licked to death.
He loves being petted, loves having his belly rubbed. And if you don’t crouch down to eye level for him to lick your face, Wizzy will stand on his hind legs and put his front paws up on a tree to get to your level so he can kiss you.
A few feet away, outside the enclosure in an area where the public can view the wolves at the Wolfkeep Wildlife Sanctuary, sits a bowling ball that’s been chewed in half.
Bock uses it as a visual aid to explain to visitors about the massive crushing power in a wolf’s jaw.
“It is not a dog,” Bock says.
The pack loves to play and there are shredded remnants of basketballs inside the enclosure.
“A basketball doesn’t last 10 seconds,” Bock says.
But the bowling ball seemed to be the toy with lasting power. Wizzy loved chasing the ball when Bock would roll it across the enclosure.
That is, until the day Bock tossed it too close, and the bowling ball rolled over Wizzy’s foot.
Wizzy stormed off, mad. The next day the ball had been chewed into three pieces.
Up close the wolf is a magnificent animal, and Bock’s mission is to teach that to people with the help of Wizzy, Woody, Mariah, Freya, Shylee, Sarah, Ollie, Heidi, Huggins and Muggins.
“I love them,” he says. “I don’t understand why people are afraid of them. Wolves are family oriented critters that bond for a lifetime and are all about raising children.”
Despite Wizzy’s friendliness toward humans, the wolves are not tame by any stretch of the imagination.
“I’ve been bit, … schooled and put in my place, yes,” Bock says. “If you work with horses long enough you’re going to get kicked, and if you work with wolves, you’re going to get bit.”
Bock, 39, loves talking about wolves.
The Wisconsin native has been caring for them for 10 years now with the help of an assortment of volunteers like Cicely Phillip, here on this day to work in the keep.
The 10 wolves — nine are arctic wolves, while Shylee is a gray — aren’t the only animals here. Two more gray wolves taken from a sanctuary in Idaho — Teton and Madison — prowl a nearby pen waiting to be integrated into the pack.
There are half a dozen hybrids on the grounds as well.
Bock rotates the hybrids — part husky, part wolf — every six months, so that three live with him in the house at all times.
Titan, Que-oz (say “Chaos”) and Gallatia just moved up to the house from a pen down below for the winter. I-O, Proteus and Larissia were sent back to the pen, located at the bottom of the mountainside where Wolfkeep Wildlife Sanctuary is located.
Wolves don’t bark, but the hybrids do.
“They are the security system,” Bock says.
This pack got its start on Ellesmere Island, a part of the Arctic Archipelago.
As Bock tells it, a Colorado man kidnapped a pregnant wolf from the island. He was eventually arrested, and the authorities’ search for someplace to place her litter of pups led them to John C. Bock, Carl’s father.
He had made his fortune in the family business, which manufactures water heaters and was active in conservation causes. He told them, “I’ve got this crazy son out in Montana. Why don’t you call him?”
Bock will tell you he is a former drug addict. And he will tell you he already owned a wolf-dog hybrid that he credits with saving his life.
As he weaned himself from crank, with every urge Bock would instead walk the hybrid.
So when the call came, Bock decided to repay the favor and took in Wizzy, Merlin, Emma and Sarah. Soon Shylee, the offspring of a captured mating pair of wolves from the Bob Marshall Wilderness, joined them and they formed the original five.
Emma had to be put down, and Merlin died in a fight to be alpha male.
The rest of the pack are the offspring of Wizzy, Sarah and Shylee. The last group was born two years ago.
There are crude tattoo marks on Carl Bock’s arm: a checkmark, a couple of lines.
Regulations require wolves that live in captivity to carry what amounts to a tattooed serial number on the inside of a leg. Bock says anything his wolves go through, he goes through too, and he has his assistants practice tattooing on him before tattooing a wolf.
“You ever call a veterinarian and tell him you want him to tattoo a wolf?” Bock says. “That’s the shortest conversation in the world.”
So Bock bought a tattoo gun, and he and his assistants taught themselves how to use it.
Bock rarely leaves the sanctuary.
“Last time was a year and a half ago, for a dentist appointment,” Bock says. “The longest I’ve been gone is 48 hours, five years ago, for my father’s funeral.”
His house is an interestingly shaped thing, part plywood tepee and part A-frame. Bock calls its style “Algonquin tepee and longhouse.”
He sleeps with his boots on in the bedroom loft in the tepee portion of the home, which is located closest to the enclosure.
“Have to break up some of the fights,” says Bock, who throws rocks in the direction of the wolves when battles erupt in the pack.
Are there a lot of fights?
Bock says the 10 acres are to a wolf what an 8-by-10-foot room would be to a human.
“You have brothers or sisters? Imagine being locked in an 8-by-10 room with them 24 hours a day for eight to 10 years,” Bock says. “You think you might eventually get into a fight to the death?”
Injured wolves are moved into an enclosure called “the spoiler” where they’ll get eggs for breakfast and steak for lunch and dinner while they recover.
“Their recuperative powers are incredible,” Bock says. “A wolf’s healing capacity is nothing short of amazing.”
On the rare occasions that he must take one to a vet, a wolf will be tranquilized, placed in a small metal container and transported to town.
He says it costs $76,000 a year to run the nonprofit educational organization, most of it coming from the John C. Bock Foundation, named for his late father.
The “wolfkeep,” as he calls it, just recently started charging $5 for adults to help cover its costs. Children under 12 are still admitted free.
“I’d like to get some people from Missoula out here to see the wolves,” Bock says. “I get more visitors from Holland each year than I do Missoula.”