At the east end of Siskiwit, where the short section of trail from Siskiwit to Intermediate Lake began, Robin stopped. “We start here,” she said.
The trapline Ridley had outlined ran from the western shore of Siskiwit, embraced Intermediate, then ran on to Lake Richie and ended at Moskey Basin, about five miles total. The lakes between Siskiwit and Moskey Basin were small, part of a scattering of puddles that dribbled across the island, from north to south, where the retreating glacier had gouged more deeply. The trapline would cover lakes, land, developed trails and open runs. Used by both East and Chippewa packs, they would have a shot at trapping wolves from more than one pack.
Two wolves in East pack and three of the known seven in Chippewa pack had been radio-collared previously. Unless there was a force on the island so powerful it could alter existing DNA in a living wolf, they could be ruled out as carriers of the foreign DNA. If they were caught again, the opportunity would be taken to check them for parvovirus, weight, general health issues and statistical information. One of the inestimable values of the wolf/moose study was that it had collected mammoth amounts of such data over a long period. Longevity had been important in earlier times, but, with the advent of computers, massive quantities of information could be processed in ever-more-illuminating ways.
Anna had experience with foothold traps but hadn’t used one in years. Katherine was familiar only with old barrel-type live traps. Bob knew nothing about either.
In her quiet, pleasant voice, Robin explained each step of the process as she set the first trap. Foothold traps resembled old-fashioned leghold traps, the spring-loaded steel jaws with jagged teeth that were famous for causing animals to chew their feet off to free themselves. The foothold was designed to avoid harming the wolves. The jaws were shallower and had small steel knobs in place of the teeth. The knobs were placed so that when the animal stepped down on the plate and sprung the trap, they would clamp above and between the toe joints to hold the foot fast without tearing the skin or breaking bones. Each trap was supplied with a tranquilizer device, a black rubber nipple two inches long and loaded with oral tranquilizer. The drug was to calm them, to keep them from harming themselves or the trappers, but it was an inexact science. It was impossible to tell how much of the sedative would actually get into the animal’s system.
“What drug do you use?” Bob asked.
“Propriopromazine,” Robin replied. “It usually keeps them sedated till we get to them. Then we give a mix of ketamine and xylazine to knock them out.”
“Ketamine. That’s the hallucinogenic that can cause amnesia,” Bob said.
“You’ve worked with ketamine?” Robin asked.
“Have we ever used ketamine?” he asked Katherine.
She turned away as if the question brought up a shameful failure.
“I can’t remember,” she mumbled, and Bob laughed.
“That’s what the stuff is known for.”
He winked at his assistant. Her face was blank, dead, as if at a secret joke between old lovers, a joke only one of them still thinks is funny. A moment of awkward silence followed, Anna and Robin feeling there’d been too much sharing, even if they had no idea what had been shared.
“Ketamine doesn’t depress the central nervous system,” Robin started again. “That’s why it’s good with animals. They’re pretty fragile. The xylazine works as well and wears off quicker, something you need to pay attention to when you’re letting them go again.”
“Are the trap tranquilizing devices already charged or do we need to charge them?” Anna asked.
“The TTDs are filled with six hundred milligrams of the propriopromazine. All you have to do is clamp it on one side of the jaws. First thing a wolf will do is try and bite the trap. I’ve never seen a TTD that wasn’t destroyed. They always get some tranquilizer into them, but we’ve found them both out cold and awake and alert. Depends.”
Attached to each trap was eight feet of kinkless chain with a vegetation drag on the end that looked like a miniature boat anchor. The drag was amazingly efficient at catching on any bit of vegetation to keep the animal from getting very far while giving it freedom of motion, another stress reducer. Near the drag, affixed to the chain, was a seven-inch-long silver cylinder with a rubber-coated antenna. This was a motion-activated radio transmitter. The metal cylinder protected it from being chewed. When the wolf – or occasionally a marauding fox – pulled on the chain, a receiver in the cabin at Malone Bay would beep to let the trappers know something was on their line and where. In summer, this allowed the researchers to find the wolf before a hapless tourist did – and before the sedative wore off. In winter, it served a more important purpose; sedated, the wolf could lose toes to frostbite or even freeze to death if left too long in a trap.
Robin opened the metal jaws and set the pressure plate, then packed trap and paraphernalia in snow till it was no longer visible. “This trap probably won’t fool anybody,” she said as she stood and addressed her audience. “There are too many of us and we’ve been here too long being stinky. The wolves will smell a rat. After you all move away, I’ll sprinkle around some clean snow and that might help. It’s best to get in and out with the least interruption of the space as possible.
“Do you want me to set the next one?” she asked Anna.
“No. It’s coming back to me. I think I’m good.”
“Okay.” Robin pulled a topographical map from her pack and folded it so the area where they were was uppermost. “You and Bob take the western side of Intermediate. Katherine and I will go around to the east. Lay the first trap here.” She pointed to where the trail split on the shore of Intermediate Lake to embrace the perimeter.
“When you get to where this little triangle of land sticks out into the water – the ice – you need to cross right here.” Robin took a mitten off to better point at the narrow bay where an isthmus curved back toward the main shore. “Put a trap there.”
“Why there?” Anna asked. It seemed out of sync with the pattern of following improved trails that Ridley had laid out.
“The wolves have been known to den up on that triangle of land.” Robin’s voice tightened as if Anna challenged her authority.
“Got it,” Anna said.
“Bob, you go with Anna. Katherine, come with me.” Anna suspected Bob would rather have learned the art of livetrapping from the lovely young biotech than the crusty old ranger, but life was full of disappointments.
“Help me with my pack,” she said. Apparently not too put out at drawing the short straw, Bob complied.
Anna leading, they reached the fork in the trail where Robin had told them to place the first trap. Snow was falling more thickly than it had been, but the wind let up, and Anna was satisfied with the compromise. Given her familiarity with ISRO – and the fact they’d be following lakeshores most of the day – there was little danger of getting lost regardless of how bad the visibility, and snow was warmer than wind.
Setting the trap was harder than Anna remembered. Cold – and the gear needed to protect from the cold – made simple tasks difficult. She had on gloves, but without mittens over them, and handling freezing steel, her fingers were awkward. Having laid the trap on the ground, Anna put a foot on each of the springs to depress them, then pulled the jaws of the trap open. Her left boot slipped and the jaws snapped shut viciously, catching a pinch of glove and skin. Anna yelped as if a finger had been bitten off. She was positive the pinch hurt far worse than it would have had there been a speck of sympathetic kindness in the elements and half remembered a short story about how wounds festered and rotted in the arctic. Having pulled off the scant protection of the glove, she surveyed the damage. No blood. She would live.
Bob turned out to be deft with his hands. Given the thickness of his fingers, it was a pleasant surprise. He uncoiled the chain and buried it as neatly as Anna could have managed. He attached the TTD and stayed out of the way while she did her best to rehabilitate the area before they left. And he had insisted that this, the first trap set, be one of the two she carried, a ten-pound weight lifted from her shoulders. All in all, the man was beginning to ingratiate himself.
The cynical core of her suspected Dr. Menechinn wasn’t ingratiating himself so much as Dr. Jekyll was in the ascendant. She had seen too much of Mr. Hyde to expect Bob’s goodness and light to last. In the meantime, she was only too happy to let him carry heavy objects.
It had taken them twice as long to set the trap as it had taken Robin, and twice as long again as it would have taken Anna in the summer. By the time they finished, it was nearly noon. With truncated days and lowering clouds, Anna doubted she and Bob would manage to set all of the remaining traps before they ran out of light.
