This week’s image is from ages ago at the rather wonderful Highland Wildlife Park. Through good timing, or plain dumb luck in abundance, the wolf pack was highly active while we were there. Spending even a short while with them delivered a lifetime worth of great photo material and a breath taking experience. A shame the photographer in question was me rather than someone with actual skill.
Onchu studied the swathe of empty forest before him without disturbing its stillness. The air brought him news in scents and sounds too faint for a lesser hunter to sense. Onchu was no lesser hunter.
The pack was drawing nearer. Their quarry, chased for many hours, was tiring. He could feel it in the rumbling of the ground. Soon the time would come for him to end the hunt. Muscles relaxed into readiness. Younger wolves might fancy that tension built power. Those pups understood nothing. Such power hindered decisive movement, and Onchu was decisiveness incarnate.
Niamh, his mate and equal in all things, ghosted noiselessly to his side. Careful hours of planning were coming to fruition now. ‘Shining One’ indeed, she truly was the glory of his pack. This scheme was hers entirely. Onchu was not so vain an alpha that he could not admit that. After all, the triumph of the wolf was the magnificence of the pack. To think otherwise was not Pack. As she was their sharp mind, and the others the relentless paws, so he was their unyielding teeth.
It was long known that deer must be chased over vast distances, until they tire enough to be taken. Clever Niamh had watched as the two-legs guided their herds to where was useful. Now their pack drove prey toward home. Meat was available for their cubs in greater abundance beyond imagining. Their pack was strong.
Beside him Niamh made no sound. The time for communication was past. The air and the earth told them all they needed to know. It was time.
Onchu flowed from his waiting-place on soundless paws. He and Niamh sped toward the oncoming herd like spirits of death, silent and implacable.
Brandon Lim 