Georgie's in Mourning -- and The Sawtooth Pack
At our house, we all are in mourning. Mickey, our old red dog, is gone; there remains Georgie, a two-year-old Border Collie mix, and the new pup Maggie. We cried, and a part of us is still crying. But my husband has his job and the countless things he does at home that I'm unable to do; my father-in-law has his church and clubs and computer and projects; I have grandchildren to dote on, and prayers to release, and dinners to make, and physical therapy to attend, my Artella work and Artella play, writing and editing to do, and eyedrops to put in Georgie's eyes, and a puppy to feed and discipline, and the meaningless, mundane, and magnificent minutiae of life to fill my moments.
For now, Georgie has only to mourn.
I've seen the Sawtooth Pack documentary a number of times, and I'm forever moved by the mourning. The wolf pack heirarchy, in theory, always shocked me -- much as I felt first learning about a caste system, with no understanding of reincarnation -- like facing liver and lima beans on the table, with no knowledge of nutrition. Senseless meanness was what I saw (especially in the liver and lima beans): The baddest and most hateful wolf eats until full, determines who else eats and what and when, and snarls and attacks without reason or restraint the weakest wolf until the whole pack joins the victimology. Mob violence at its lowest and mobbiest.
We see it in humans, of course -- the person who "looks" or "acts" like a "victim" and thereby "attracts" actions that distance the person from "peers", or "asks for" escalating acts of hazing and sometimes assault. I've seen it as a teacher, and not only amongst students.
It was that personal experience I brought with me to the Sawtooth Pack documentary. Why, those mean wolves! Who says that one gets to be boss? Why, too, when one female had clearly been his choice of mate, did he suddenly warm up to the left-out gal, the almost certain choice for the lowly Omega, leaving the next-least-liked to fall into that horrible bottom spot? The lesson here, dare I assume, was that the loudest and largest and bossiest wins? I'd spent my life trying to upset that thinking and equalize life for those less accepted!
There, of course, was the flaw in my logic: (a) Those I was drawing into the fold were humans; and (b) I wasn't the prescient creature canis lupus is.
For, within the course of that first Sawtooth Pack study, I saw that the "mean", "bossy" wolf led, and guided, and disciplined, and needed both the sustenance and the respect of the others to do it. The female he chose for his mate produced fine, healthy pups. The Beta was not thrown aside, but was now in what I first unthinkingly called 'the Babysitter slot' -- nurturing, protecting the youngsters, and gradually introducing them into the adult pack... that is, teaching. (Hm.) And the wolf who by default became the Omega, the lowest caste in the canis lupus system, accepted her role. But she was not, as I first thought, merely the outcast.
She (I think -- at this point in a wolf pack, gender scarcely matters) ate last, was snarled away from important pack meeting business, and in nearly all things, was ignored and her efforts to join in repulsed. But -- and here I sit up, my ears peak, my sense of smell grows keen -- she was the leader in play. Comic relief, one might say. When all were fed and full, the work of the day done and no longer remembered, she teased and ran and drew the others in for some well-deserved gaiety. It may have looked like more snapping and snarling, but there was romping involved. And the Omega initiated it.
Those documenting the pack were puzzled and saddened when one morning the Omega was not with the pack. The pack itself was mystified, sniffing and nudging at her body when they tracked her down. And with the removal of her carcass from the grounds came about an almost mystical mood: For weeks, there was little movement among the others. There was little eating. There was no playing. Much howling accompanied the nights, haunting calls to whatever spirit a lifeless wolf leaves behind. That little Omega was not a nuisance after all: she was beloved by the others, for all that she was. She was sorely missed and her loss was monumentally mourned.
Such is the way our Georgie mourns now.