So are wolves different to dogs? Certainly! A wolf is a never-ending challenge and keeps you on your toes. Not that they are vicious or aggressive, they are not. They are inquisitive, spiteful when they don’t get their own way, demanding, aloof like cats, and supremely intelligent.

When Akela was six months old, she learnt to open the fridge with her paw. But I’m sure dog-owners have come home to empty fridges too.

So I locked the fridge but two weeks later it was emptied again. I cursed myself for forgetting to lock it. Two days later it was raided again… but I was sure I had locked it. Following her around the house, I soon discovered that she had learnt that she needed to turn the key between her teeth before the door would open. So it became lock, remove and put the key where she couldn’t get it.

Wolves are natural-born thieves too. Several times have I arrived home with a freshly-roasted Pick ‘n Pay chicken, only to see the chicken flying out the house in her jaws while the car is being unpacked.

When we lived in Llandudno - she was a year old then - if your dirtbin lid went missing, you knew where to find it. Seeing her walk down the street with a lid in her mouth was a sight not to be missed. Smelly shoes left at someone’s front door or flipper left on the beach all got carried home.

A friend in Stanford remarked how she had that characteristic of wild animals where they can be in one spot one moment, and somewhere completely else then next.

On a visit to David Daitz’s office some years ago when he was head of CapeNature, I was surprised to see a stunning wolf poster on the wall. I asked about it. He had been to the wolf sanctuary in the south of France which receives more tourists than Cape Town. The poster was there to remind him of the attraction of nature.

A week later we were at Die Plaat near Gansbaai - a long empty beach. Akela was in a very playful mood, running up to me on her hind legs and boxing me with her paws, then charging off, feinting, and dashing back. Watching her movements - so unlike a dog’s - was pure ballet!

The harvest ended last Friday and next Sunday church services are being held to give thanks. It seems to have been a bumper harvest.

It’s an eye-opener living on a farm in the Elgin Valley and experiencing a harvest that starts just before Christmas and ends in the middle of May – five full months of picking, picking and picking – plums, pears and apples.

Now imagine if only one varietal was planted and everything had to be harvested at the same time! It would be impossible! The bulk of Restanwold is given to apples, with seven different varieties planted, each needing harvesting at a different time.

Fruit must be delivered to the co-operative – Two-a-Day in this case – the day the fruit is picked, so the lorries (that’s what they call them in the countryside, not trucks) often run back and forth until 10pm. The drone of busy forklift trucks loading bins carries across the valley.

Fruit that falls onto the ground (windfall it’s called) and undersized or imperfect fruit goes to Elgin Fruit Juices, so little goes to waste. They receive up to 3,000 bins a day. That’s about 1,000 tonnes of fruit daily!

Great care goes into the picking. Pickers carry special bags that avoid bruising the fruit. It’s interesting that most bruising occurs when one apple falls out of the tree, bruising those it knocks on its way down.

The valley is changing rapidly now as winter approaches – colours have changed from bushy greens to gold, orange, yellow and brown as the leaves change colour, fall off and the earth becomes visible again.

The time on the farm was the essential quiet time needed to catch up on CapeInfo’s upgrade and recover from the theft of the old laptop. It was a long hard slog, but that too is over now. Now it’s time for this to bear fruit!

Akela running through the orchard with Granny Smith between her teeth!

She also likes Top Red and Pink Ladies, but doesn’t care that much for Golden Delicious.  Those are just a few of the apple varieties around here.

She picks them up and carries them rather gingerly between her teeth, having discovered that they get impaled on her rather long canines.  When she’s ready to eat the one she chose very carefully, she lies down and nibbles away at it with her front teeth.

The Staffie, on the other hand, just crunches away as soon as he finds one he likes, and he’ll frequently eat two apples a day.

Akela has peculiar tastes.  She loves olives straight off the tree and anyone who has tasted a fresh olive will know how bitter and ghastly they taste.  She recognises olive trees out of season and heads straight off to them to look for olives.

Akela in an ad for Volvo Switzerland photographed in Deer Park, Cape Town in December.  Akela becomes a pack of wolves, thanks to Photoshop!

In the wild, wolves mate or bond for life and I have become her dominant male and Kenya is part of her pack. 

Akela is now 9½ years old and, while she makes friends with women and children (sometimes with embarrassing affections), she has never let men touch her.  She just backs off; even from men she has known all her life.

The only man she ever expressed a very cautious interest in was Lindsay Hunt  who owned Solole Nature Reserve near Kommetjie. He’d been sleeping with a baby buffalo or somethething that he was acclimatising to its new home, so maybe that was the reason.  But he also has a rare empathy for animals.

But she’s met someone on the farm who has treated her differently from all others.  The first time JP met her, he lay on the ground to stay lower than her.  He has always respected her reticence and never tried to sneak in a quick stroke.

Today we rode into town with JP in his bakkie, part of the journey in the back and part in the cab with him.  I left her in the cab with JP when I went into the shops and was astounded to find her rubbing up against JP when I got back, enjoying his attentions.

Michael Tatalias, SATSA’s CEO, came especially to meet Akela last night.  He sent a few of the photos he took.  

One just has to imagine walking in a forest, hearing nothing but seeing glowing orbs of light shining from the undergrowth that follow your progress.

Wolves are shy and will avoid people, unless they are friends.  They are also extremely inquisitive.  Their eyes are completely different to dogs and, from close, you can see the complex lens structure which is more similar to a cat.

One can imagine the fear this must have instilled in anyone unfamiliar with the wild. But American Indians believed that wolves are a sign of a healthy forest.  And a National Geographic video made the point that while Americans have killed 200,000 wolves, not a single American has ever been killed by a wolf!

Michael’s email with the pics concluded, “This was a special experience. Thank you.”

Burglars entered the house during the very early hours of this morning and stole a laptop and cell phone of a table downstairs.  A disaster, because the back-up disk crashed three days ago and extra space on the server for backing up only becomes available today.

Where were the ferocious wolf and aggressive Staffie?  Fast asleep upstairs!  (And both descriptions suit neither of them.)

The Staffie probably did sleep through it all, but the wolf went to inspect after they left.  She left a puddle at the door they entered to mark her domain.

So forget about a wolf as a watchdog.  They will hide until the coast is clear and then go to inspect.  (Cornering one is another story and Akela is also fiercely protective of Kenya.)

What was surprising is that robbers would enter a house with two animals like these inside.  It became apparent afterwards that the thieves had been casing the area for some time so they must have known animals were there.  In a period of two weeks, over 20 houses in this part of Hout Bay were robbed – usually laptops, cell phones and DVD players – the new currency of affirmative shopping.  Dogs and burglar alarms presented no obstacle to these professionals.

This has put all ideas of travel on hold.  Catching up on lost work in the laptop is a daunting task.  Bastards!

Akela meets “Little Red Riding Hood”

IN 1960, John Steinbeck set off in his camper on a 16,000 kilometre trip with his poodle Charley. The outcome was his best-seller, Travels with Charley: in search of America.
That was the inspiration for this blog. But instead of a poodle, the travelling companions are Akela, the Wolf, and Kenya, a Staffordshire Terrier.
They have stayed in hotels and guest houses, and have visited a number of schools where kids have learnt about wolves. This photo was taken at Bredasdorp Primary School where a pupil dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood. (Read more below.)

About: Travels with Charley in Search of America
Extract from The Literary Encycopedia; by Cecilia S. Donohue, Madonna University.

Published in 1962, Travels with Charley in Search of America was John Steinbeck’s last important full-length work before his death six years later. While Steinbeck was best known throughout his career as a writer of fiction, most notably for The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, and East of Eden, this memoir, chronicling his trek across the United States with his French poodle, became a national best-seller.

Readers can discern common threads amidst Steinbeck’s observations on the American people and his concerns about America’s future as he crosses the continent. Much has changed in America over the four decades since Travels with Charley’s publication, yet many of Steinbeck’s statements seem prophetic for their time and extremely relevant for ours.

What inspired Steinbeck to venture out on such a trip, which began in the fall of 1960, when he was just short of his 60th birthday? Within the first few pages of the book, he explains, “I had not felt the country for twenty-five years.” Considering his reputation as a sharp observer of the United States as both a socio-historical macrocosm and a microcosm of vividly drawn characters, we can understand such sentiment as a prime motivator. His rationale also includes elements of confession; he openly addresses the physical excesses of his life. Although he does not depart on his journey without a fully stocked bar, he nonetheless leaves readers with the impression that this trip will serve as a sort of purgation of the masculine, creative soul.

His transportation is a camper, christened Rocinante, named after Don Quixote’s steed. While this suggests that Steinbeck may have first ventured out with a view to tilting at windmills (as the narrators of several of his previous works did), the overall tone of this prose proves otherwise. Steinbeck makes his observations, expresses his opinions, and draws his own conclusions, but rarely, if ever, does he present a prescription for the societal woes and wrongs he witnesses. He also underscores the personal, subjective nature of his impressions, making it clear to readers that he is creating his own reality of America in this writing: “What I set down here is true until someone else passes that way and rearranges the world in his own style.” Implicit in this statement is that everyone has to create his/her own reality, based on individual knowledge and experience.

“What sort of dog is that?”
This is a frequent question… or… “Aww, cute, I want one too.”

Akela is a nine year-old gray wolf (Canus Lupus). She is not a dog. Dogs are a sub species - Canus Lupus Familiaris. Wolves are magnificent, spiritual creatures - remember, God created the wolf; man made dogs! And no, it’s unlikely you do want one as a pet because you have to adopt your lifestyle to suit her, she doesn’t just adapt and fit in as dogs do.

You’ll have to come back to learn more about wolves… there is so much to tell.

What we will show you here
In words, photos and videos we’ll share exciting experiences visiting different places and meeting interesting people in our travels.