Thursday December 20, 2018 by WannaskaWriter

Ugh, I’m getting too old for this. I took a good kick to the chin--and then he ground me into a tree. ... I think all my teeth are loosened.
 
I know what you’re saying. My ribs and hips hurt. They ain’t been right since the last moose we took down. At our age, we’ve got to find smaller slower food to eat. Let them pups find out what food really costs. 

I’m fed up with having to do all the work, take all the punishment, trot miles back to the den site just to regurgitate all the best stuff for those lazy bastards. All they do is lay around the den all day on their bones. By their age we were running with the pack, doing our share ...
 
Yeah but, back in the day, there were more reliable food sources. We didn’t have to hunt so hard. We were protected ...

Protected? From who? Only those who wouldn’t have shot at us anyways! I’ve dodged many a bullet in Palmville escaping only by the skin of my teeth... Speaking of which, I got one missing it feels like ... Yeah, I thought so.
 
It’s a canine, right? Haha! A canine tooth? 

Nooooo, .... No, it’s a molar. The very same one I split gnawing on a deer last fall. You’d think with all the power we got in our jaws, like what? Fourteen hundred pounds per square inch, ain’t it? Why we’d demolish bones like nothin’.
 
Yeah, with new teeth. Your teeth aren’t exactly new, now are they? 

No, you’re right. They ain’t going to last forever, unless we start changing our dietary intake and begin eating softer food--like fish, for instance.
 
 FISH? How revolting, repellent, repulsive, sickening, nauseating, nauseous, stomach-churning, stomach-turning, off-putting, unpalatable, unappetizing, uninviting, unsavoury, distasteful, foul, nasty, obnoxious, odious, vomitous, yucky, icky, gross, sick-making, gut-churning, grotty, squicky, bogging, disgustful! 
Give me a good old fashioned gut pile, myself. Fish are all just wet and slimy, an’ got an eye on both sides of their heads... 

Hey, I’m not joshing you. I heard on a truck radio just the other day--- when I was napping up by the landing where some fools were getting ready to go ice fishing ...
 
In this weather? It’s been upwards of 30+ degrees above zero for days! You ain’t catching me on this ice.
 
But, historically, they have.
 
What?
 
Caught us on ice, in airplanes, on snowmobiles
 
I have never been in an airplane or on no snowmobile.
 
Geesus! Something’s loosed in your head other than your teeth! Two-leggeds have hunted us on the ice from airplanes and snowmobiles
 
What were we doing out there to begin with? Skating? Taking a shortcut?
 
Well yeah. Ice doesn’t have to be so thick to support us given our weight distribution, even though in our prime we maybe weigh close to a hundred pounds or more. 

Cuttin’ across the ice of a lake or river, saves on energy, even if it can be a harrowing experience. I’m not sure if I wanna be the first one across or the last one across. Ice is never 100% safe. But speakin’ of weight ...
 
Not anymore, look at my ribs. Look at your raggedy hide...
 
If we varied our seasonal intake we could be lean and in shape at the same time.
 
You sayin’ that bein’ fat means bein’ out of shape? I think ‘fat’ isn’t something I’ve been all year and would sure love to experience hyperphagia again before going into winter. I’d gladly give up being in shape for being comfortably and happily fat. Bein’ ‘in shape’ i.e., skinny, is the shape I was born with, constantly skinny, lacking in energy, ambition and enthusiasm. Some trade off.
  
Nutrition is better than attrition. The ones that eat, live--the ones that don’t, have to keep hunting. So that brings me back to the premise of this conversation, er ‘talk,’ that we need to vary our diet now before our present one kills us.
 
Now you’re going to say we have to watch our cholesterol, ain’t ya?
 
Well, other than our higher intelligence, extreme handsomeness, well-rounded sense of humor, and empathy (in some cases) we can’t be that much different physiology-wise than a human, so maybe cholesterol is an important something to watch, but let’s not get too technical to start with. Like I suggested, ‘fish’ could be one of our staples--it’s not far-fetched.
 
Not too far-fetched for who? For what? A heron? Look how ugly herons are! They’re that way for a reason.

C’mon be broadminded here. Bears eat fish!
 
I rest my case. Bears are no prettier than herons.
 
Bears have to eat a lot of fish to go into winter FAT, and wolves don’t.  But, we’re similar.
 
Yeah, like in the head, body, legs and feet departments?
 
No!--Well, yeah, we do share those characteristics, but I don’t know if anyone’s noticed or not that even though everybody knows we eat basically meat--making us carnivores, that we’re technically omnivores too, like bears, because we’ve been known to eat berries -- and fish.
 
FISH?? There you go again with those!
 
Wait, wait-- sit on your tail a minute. Yeah fish, hear me out... I’ve eaten a few grubs on occasion.
 
Oh sure, is this an exposé? What are you up to? Self-disclosure? You’re not coming out to me are you?
 
I’m ignoring your comments and continuing your education here. Oh, I forgot to mention, grubs aren’t that bad in a pinch, either. Bears eat ‘em. So do skunks and raccoons.
 
ARGH! You’re making me crazy! All we were doing, I thought, was assessing our damaged parts after the hunt and now you‘re off and running with all this poppycock and about us starting to eat bugs, berries and bass! What the hell?
 
You failed to include us eating grass, which a Scandanavian study (https://www.quora.com/Do-wolves-or-wild-dogs-eat-vegetables-in-the-wild) showed we have a predisposition to eat grass because it serves as prophylactic treatment against intestinal parasites--which, you could sort of think about doing the same thing as an antacid tablet. In other words, we don’t eat grass to throw up.
 
WHAT??? You’re so full of shit!
 
Not with all the fibre we eat! A bone or two might get caught in there sideways, but our GI systems are so powerful and efficient that we probably could eat almost anything safely. We’ve got 42 teeth! Think of us as land sharks... “Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water...” HA! So all I was saying, aside from your constant interruptions, is that because we’re aging we oughta think about taking care of ourselves and trying different foods is all. Would you consider that for a moment? We got some time here. C’mon, think.

Okay, I see you’re still stubborn... Bears for instance, eat meat--just like us, right? Most bears are big things and you just know they have to eat a lot of something to keep them big, but I read (Yes, wolves read all the time) where plants make up 90% of a bear’s diet.
 
Grass? Bears eat grass as most of their food? There you’ve done it!  You’ve suffered a brain injury! I’m callin’ the alpha male! “BOUCHARD!! BOUCHARD!!
 
NO! STOP! Don’t be botherin’ the boss with this! Every organism that entertained change from the norm has been considered crazy, right? You know the story of our ancestor who saw the first two-legged with a firestick, right? He/she tells his friends--and they laugh at him/her--and he/she tells whatever else up the line of command and everybody thinks he/she’s crazy--and before you know it, they’re chasin’ us with airplanes and snowmobiles across the ice. Things can happen that fast. We MUST find new food sources and ...
 
Fish, you’re insisting, can be one of them, eh?
 
YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!
 
We live in Minnesota where we know there’s a bunch of fish. Birds and bears eat fish all year. Eagles swoop in over lakes and take ‘em, we’ve seen that. And we’ve trotted past fish swimmin’ in shallow water, splashin’ around like they’re nuts, some of ‘em are big! They’re easy food! There are wolves along the west coast that hunt fish all the time. They’re no bigger than we are, in our current skinny state, so they don’t have to pack it on to survive the winter months, but they eat both four-legged meat and fish and do fine.
 
They eat berries too?
 
Yeah, they know what’s good.
 
But no bugs.
 
Yeah, they eat bugs too, Hey, bugs have more protein than fish---according to on-line sources.
 
Look. I’ll ‘entertain,’ this idea, as you say, eating a few fish, a pawful of berries now and then--and maybe a grub or two by accident, but I’m not passin’ up a steak or roast to eat bugs forever. I am goin’ to talk to Bouchard about the pups being on their bones ‘way too long because it takes away the general health of the pack.


Atta boy