To high-drive labs and boarder collies, fetch is often more than just a game; it’s their job, a dead serious business.

When we gaze into the adoring eyes of a canine companion, we’re staring at the carefully muted and shaped soul of a wolf.

Their presence also offers inestimable aesthetic value to many residents, even if they never manage to see one. Besides that, shooting wolves from airplanes is just plain wrong and reflects horribly on the state’s image. Anyone who doesn’t see things that way is a nearsighted, beetle-browed, knuckle-dragging redneck.

There is precisely zero scientific evidence demonstrating wolves, unlike ourselves, have ever driven any species to extinction. Of course, no antiwolf advocate points to the unrestricted slaughter and habitat reduction, not by wolves but by humans, that speeded the demise of those great herds of bison, deer, and elk reported by Lewis and Clark.

Immaculate predators, the very symbol of pure, uncompromising wildness, wolves and what we call civilization seem to be, in the cold terms of logic, mutually exclusive circumstances.

He squinted thoughtfully, then grinned. “Actually, I thought having him around was pretty cool. People, not the wolf, were the real management issue, and for the most part, they acted in a respectful and responsible manner.

If nothing else, wolves are masters at decoding intentions.

Research and eyewitness anecdotes show that mated wolves do indeed form till-death-do-us-part monogamous bonds that equal any in the animal kingdom and put many human commitments to shame.

And I won't put you through his imitation of it, ... It was just this repeated, very high-pitched, rhythmic, animal-like, totally melted-down scream, over and over. ... And then the bear comes back.

There's very few people who are not fascinated by a wild animal that seems to recognize us, and bring us into their world. All Timothy Treadwell is and was is a more heightened and more intense version of that same impulse in ourselves.