A mysterious, seemingly never ending chorus of howls rang in my eardrums for the first time. The sound was ominous yet beautiful, and the windy atmosphere around me added to the eerie mood. So far, the first vacation my family and I had ever had in Canada had been lovely, and one day we found ourselves at the Toronto Zoo on an early November morning. The whipping wind and cold nipped at my face as I tightened my scarf and gloves. Small snow crystals slowly descended from the sky, landing in my hair and blanketing the ground. The zoo was nearly empty, for who would want to wander around the zoo in such cold, snowy weather? I, for one, did not complain about the temperature and was extremely excited at the idea of visiting the zoo, since they are one of my favorite places. I would’ve loved to see the polar bears and other arctic species in their snow covered environments since I love learning about, watching, and caring for animals. However, I had not known that this visit would have left as great as an impact as it had, and I am thankful for every moment I had there.
I first suggested that we go see the wolves, one of my favorite animals. As we casually walked, cracked jokes and enjoyed our time, all of a sudden a series of howls set off. They started off slowly and then progressively became louder and more in unison.
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“Wow,” my younger brother uttered in shock as we approached the exhibit. The sight was amazing; a large pack of wolves with pure white, silky fur gathered onto a pile of stones, howling into the sky. The wolves’ harmony entranced me, and I continued to watch them stretch their front legs and reach closer to the sky, opening their mouths and roaring. My hands started becoming clammy, and my muscles began to tighten up with the cold wind breaking through my clothing.
The chorus of howls reminded me of the time my grandmother taught me about wolves and all their unique traits that I would have never known by looking at them. Her passion drew my mind to visualize my nostalgic memories of all the wolf paintings and photographs that decorated nearly all the walls in her cozy home. The wolves continued to howl, and my parents decided for us to find somewhere warm in the zoo, however the memory remained frozen in my mind. I could hear their cries across the park, and I wished I could watch them
longer. After my family and I warmed up in the cafe with warm glasses of hot chocolate, my parents, brother, and I continued to walk around the zoo despite having no signs of the temperature rising. All of the animals were so beautiful and inspiring that I took over one hundred photos of them in the most unique poses. When we arrived home from that vacation, I went straight to drawing some of my favorite photos before I went back to school that Monday. Drawing is one of my passions and being able to draw animals, one of my most treasured entities, was and remains amazing. To this day, I still return to my camera and relive that memory of first time I watched the wolves cry their symphony at the Toronto Zoo.
“The wolf did with the lambkin dwell in peace. His grim carnivorous nature there did cease. The leopard with the harmless kid laid down. And not one savage beast was seen to frown.
"Everyone is influenced by their childhood. The things I write about and illustrate come from a vast range of inputs, from the earliest impressions of a little child, others from things I saw yesterday and still others from completely out of the blue, though no doubt they owe their arrival to some stimulus, albeit unconscious. I have a great love of wildlife, inherited from my parents, which show through in my subject matter, though always with a view to the humorous—not as a reflective device but as a reflection of my own fairly happy nature.
There is a serene moment when reading John Muir “A Windstorm in the forests,” that rushed through me. Which can only be described as a rush of emotions that one might face when returning home after traveling for so long. I feel that this response is so far harder to write than I could have imagined it to be because the forest Muir is describing within his story, within the Sierra Nevada is one that I grew up with. The same ones that I spent my summers and winter breaks at, I feel a slight struggle when trying to describe my response because I didn’t realize how much I miss all of that and how many of my memories are surrounded by that forest. Reading Muir story brought back the images of seeing stretches of land covered in an endless amount
While the man is thinking about the wolf and the impact it had on its surroundings, he knows that many people would be afraid of the it. Realizing that something can be both “terrible and of great beauty,” the man's sense of awe is heightened. While laying under the moonlight, the man thinks about the wolf both figuratively and literally running through the dew on the grass and how there would be a “rich matrix of creatures [that had] passed in the night before her.” Figuratively, this represents the wolf running into heaven. However, the man imagining the wolf literally running and the beauty of her free movements across the “grassy swale” creates a sense of awe that he has for the wolf. A wolf running towards someone would be terrifying, but a wolf running with freedom is magnificently beautiful. After imagining this, the man knows that even though wolves can be terrifying, “the world cannot lose” their sense of beauty and
It is often said that a dog is a man’s best friend. In Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Crossing, a deep affection and fondness are established between man and animal. In a particular excerpt from the novel, Cormac illustrates the protagonist’s sorrow that was prompted from the wolf’s tragic death. As blood stiffens his trousers, the main character seeks to overcome the cold weather and fatigue with hopes of finding the perfect burial site for the wolf. McCarthy uses detailed descriptions and terminology in his novel, The Crossing, to convey the impact of the wolf’s death on the protagonist, a sad experience incorporated with religious allusions and made unique by the main character’s point of view.
It has been said that the wolf is one of the most voracious and horrifying animals that exist in nature today. But, in all reality, is that actually true? One is unable to make an assumption such as this without a firsthand experience, or so that is expressed in In The Shadow of a Rainbow and Never Cry Wolf. Authors Robert Franklin Leslie and Farley Mowat make every attempt to convey the true nature of the wolf throughout their journeys, as they prove claims falsely accusing wolves, with documented evidence of complete vigilance. These works of literary nonfiction effectively refute anti-wolf claims made within them through being dangerous to the wildlife, dangerous to humans, and viciousness.
Part Two of the novel shifts the narrative perspective to that of the she-wolf. After the famine is over, the wolf pack separates, and the she-wolf and three males travel together, until one of the wolves, “One Eye,” kills the other two. The she-wolf and One Eye travel together, then, until it is time for her to settle down to give birth to her cubs. Another famine comes upon the land when the cubs are still young, and all of the cubs die—except one: a gray wolf cub. This gray wolf is the strongest and the most adventuresome of all the litter. Yet early in his life, he learns how to snare food and along with this ability, he learns the lesson of the wilderness—that is, “eat or be eaten, kill or be killed.”
For the characters in Angela Carter's “The Company of Wolves,” danger lurks in the the grey areas, the ambiguous spaces between opposites. The plethora of socially constructed binaries—male and female, passive and active, innocence and maturity, civilization and wilderness, man and wolf—have the ability to be harmful and restrictive, but perhaps more worryingly, they create an ill-defined middle ground between where the rules are vague and fluid, which allows for dishonesty and deception, and Carter foregrounds the resultant proliferation of untruths as the real peril. One vehicle for clear and honest communication, however, is the narrator's changing characterization of the
Carter, Angela. "The Company of Wolves." Folk and Fairy Tales. Eds. Martin Hallett and Barbara Karasek. 3rd Edition. Toronto: Broadview Press, 2002.
The first part of the story tells folk tales about the wolf and werewolf. Here, wolves are used as a symbol of fear. It overwhelms the reader with terrifying descriptions of the wolf and shows the reader that the wolf is clearly something that strikes fear into the people in the story. They are described as “forest assassins grey members of a congregation of nightmare” and are known to be worse than “all the teeming perils of the night and the forest, ghosts, hobgoblins, ogres that grill babies upon gridirons, witches”. These monsters are not real and fear for these nonexistent monsters is ridiculous as they are fictional. The fear fo...
Standing on the balcony, I gazed at the darkened and starry sky above. Silence surrounded me as I took a glimpse at the deserted park before me. Memories bombarded my mind. As a young girl, the park was my favourite place to go. One cold winter’s night just like tonight as I looked upon the dark sky, I had decided to go for a walk. Wrapped up in my elegant scarlet red winter coat with gleaming black buttons descending down the front keeping away the winter chill. Wearing thick leggings as black as coal, leather boots lined with fur which kept my feet cozy.
Marseille, Mirko M., Birgit H. M. Elands, and Meike L. van den Brink. "Experiencing Polar Bears In The Zoo: Feelings And Cognitions In Relation To A Visitor's Conservation Attitude." Human Dimensions Of Wildlife 17.1 (2012): 29-43. Environment Index. Web. 27 Mar. 2014.
Canada: home of the most picturesque landscapes and land of multicultural societies. Canada has everything and more. From the massive multicultural society in Toronto, housing nearly every nationality to the great mountainous terrain where the Canadian borders meet the Arctic Circle. Soon I am to travel there and get the opportunity to see these characteristics for myself. I am therefore curious as to what I will experience and learn from this journey. This assignment consist of my expectations for the journey and my view on being a foreigner in a different country. The assignment uses the future tense.
captive by a sheath of frost, as were the glacial branches that scraped at my windows, begging to get in. It is indeed the coldest year I can remember, with winds like barbs that caught and pulled at my skin. People ceaselessly searched for warmth, but my family found that this year, the warmth was searching for us.
A little girl has went to bring her grandmother some cookies, as she walks through the woods she meets a wolf and tells the wolf where she is headed. The wolf then beats the girl to her house, eats the grandmother, and dresses up as her to trick Little Red Riding Hood before she arrives. When she gets there she notices her Grandmother looks different. When she is close enough to recognize it is no her grandmother, the wolf eats her. In reality we all know that wolves cannot speak and are not intelligent enough to trick a human, but the moral behind the story is where the facts come in. In reality we all know we should not talk to strangers, its very dangerous. The wolf represents people who may be charming, polite or, sweet but are still strangers but in real life these are the people children should watch out for the