What big eyes you have
Public gets close to wolves, other animals at wildlife expo
PUNTA GORDA — Drool dripped on the wooden floor of the cage where Kamots
lay, his tea-brown eyes half-closed like a house cat lying in the sun.
Appearing half-interested, the wolf turned only slightly when an elderly
woman made kissing noises at him through the chain-link cage he and his
mother, a cream-colored wolf named Tehya, occupied.
While some passersby cooed over Kamots, others backed away from the
140-pound wolf, moving toward the squawking parrots, panting greyhounds
and sleeping skunks that were scattered throughout the Wildlife/Animal
Awareness Expo at Fishermen’s Village in Punta Gorda Saturday.
“We’re trying to do away with the big, bad wolf image,” said Deanna
Deppen, a Shy Wolf Sanctuary Education and Experience Center volunteer who
sat in the cage with the pair. “We don’t want people to be afraid of
them.”
The sanctuary, which keeps about 20 wolves and a host of other abused and
abandoned animals from coyotes to gopher tortoises at its Naples site,
takes Kamots and Tehya to schools and nursing homes to educate the public
about wolves.
Passing through the animal expo, Betty and Frank Kolarik paused next to
the cage where Kamots and Tehya reclined, moving in close to the
chain-link fence.
“They’re gorgeous,” Betty said. “Absolutely gorgeous.”
Rescued from a Labelle home with a third wolf, Kamots’ and Tehya’s lives
almost didn’t make it this far. If the sanctuary hadn’t rescued them,
Animal Control would have put them to sleep.
“They’re considered unplaceable because they’re wolves,” Deppen said.
Often, Deppen said, people take on wolves not realizing how big they’re
going to get or how to really take care them.
Shy Wolf president Nancy Smith, who started the Naples sanctuary on
two-and-a-half acres in her back yard, said part of the problem is that
people who take on wolves as pets think they can train them like dogs.
“It’s a shame that people feel the need to control them,” she said.
Although residents are required to obtain licenses to own animals that are
75 to 100 percent wolf, Deppen said breeders sell the animals
indiscriminately.
Deppen is keeping one of the wolves at her own home right now because of
the sanctuary’s limited space. That wolf, Yukon, had been beaten by its
previous owner.
“Ninety percent of these animals are killed,” Smith said. “It’s just
really a shame.”