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ZooCrew: A day in the life of a wolf pup

Written by: ZooCrew Denny students—Cassie, Caitlin, Matea and Trevor


Note from the blog editor:
Our ZooCrew middle school program aims to give students a first-hand look at how fun and rewarding a career in science can be. This semester’s students got hands-on experience exploring several different science careers, from zookeeping to conservation education to science writing. 

A small group of students from our ZooCrew Denny program chose to spend their semester working on their science writing skills, and this blog post comes from an exercise they did in imagining themselves as wolf pups growing up in a pack. Congratulations to the ZooCrew students on a job well done! Here is their story:




Dear blog readers,

We are going to talk about a wolf pup’s life and what they have to go through in their life. So here we go.

Wolf pack at Woodland Park Zoo. Photo by Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo.
Part one
We are the life structure of the pack. Our parents bring new life into the pack. The pack has to respect the rules of helping the rest of us grow up and become leaders one day. We will fight for our pack and so that other packs can’t invade us. We sat during the long boring lecture about how we need to start being responsible. My parents told us that one of us would have to train to become alpha....

We started training today, it started ok...
To be continued...

Wolves at play at Woodland Park Zoo. Photo by Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo.

Part two
As we move into position I'm thinking this is my first hunt, my first deer. There are a lot of firsts being a cub, a lot of learning, but you get used to it. As we run across the woods it feels like I'm flying. Then we find the deer, dad runs after it, and we all follow. Part of the pack goes around the brush to the left to Cordero the deer, I go with my dad to the other side. We spot the deer grazing in a nearby field and as we sneak up on the unsuspecting deer, dad goes in for the kill. Oh, the spoils of the hunt. As we carry back the deer I think the first hunt was a success, now I wonder how deer tastes. I do hope it tastes good.

And that concludes our first blog post. Feel free to comment.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Great job, ZooCrew! Good luck with your studies.
Anonymous said…
Love the first person (wolf) perspective. Great job.