Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center

Last week, I told you that when my parents were visiting, we went to a wolf conservation center.

I have also mentioned before that Elisabeth's favorite animal are wolves and that she is kind of in love with them.

Well, my dear friend Kim found this place online and told me about it. The Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center is a place that has 17 wolves, 2 coyotes and 4 foxes under their care. I definitely wanted to take Elisabeth to this place because not only would she get to see wolves but she'd get to ask questions to the tour guide about her beloved animal.

Elisabeth loves to ask tour guides questions.

So, I scheduled our visit and we drove one hour to Divide, CO. As soon as we got out of the car, we could hear the wolves howling to each other. Elisabeth, as Evan put it, was delirious with excitement. She could barely walk because she was trying to jump/run/twirl all while saying, "I can hear them! Can you hear them?!"

The people at the center were so friendly. Our tour guide's name was Deborah and she was patient and encouraging with all of Elisabeth's questions (and all the other people on the tour as well).

They have 4 swift foxes and we met them first. This little female fox is the boss of that group.

This is her big brother. She stole at least 3 treats from him that Deborah was passing out. Look, he seems so dejected.

Julia was excited to see the wolves too, but she soon demanded to be let out so she could dig in the dirt. I'm not kidding.
The female coyote. Her brother was too shy to come out to visit us from his spot at the top of their hill.

What I loved the most about the whole tour was watching the tour guide, Deborah, interact with the wolves. The wolves bounded up to the gate as soon as they saw her coming. She knew them all and would describe how they'd come to the center and their personalities. A lot of them were brother and sister or maybe parent and child. She obviously loved the wolves and was passionate about protecting them.

I liked this guy. He was only 1.5 years old and he was HUGE! One of the other wolves in the center had been born with a bone disease and was given growth supplements in his meal to help him grow and to help his bone density. Well, this guy here, would sneak bites of food from the sick wolf. Needless to say, he's kind of body builder now. And, he has a new roommate who doesn't take supplements.


They had two pure white wolves that were sisters. Oh my goodness, they were beautiful.
My favorite part was the end of the tour. We stood in the middle of the sanctuary and tour guide Deborah told us that we were going to howl to get the wolves to howl back. She said if we could get the female coyote going, she'd get the wolves going with her yips. So, we started by howling in a high pitch and then howling in a low pitch. Then, we waited. A few seconds later, the coyote started yipping. Soon, a couple of wolves started howling. Before we knew it, all the wolves were going. You could hear the differences in their tones--some being higher and some being low. It was beautiful. It brought tears to my eyes.
(My camera died after the above picture of Ebeth. So, I used my mom's. Please ignore the date at the bottom of the pictures. We did not time travel to the future, I promise.)

After the howling, we went to visit the pups. 3 of them lived together--a brother and sister and then another male.
Tour guide Deborah told us that, for $35, Elisabeth could get her picture taken with a wolf. How could we say no?
Elisabeth chose the youngest wolf, a pure black 5 month old named Na'vi. Yep, this guy is only 5 months old. He is going to be ginormous.
Elisabeth was excited but timid. She's that way around dogs too. I blame the fact that she wsa scratched in the face by a dog when she was just 1 as the reason for her timidness.
We all got to pet Na'vi (except for Julia and my dad who were not interested).
I ended up sitting with Elisabeth to help her relax. Na'vi was so friendly. He kept trying to lick us and would try to lay his head on Elisabeth. I think he felt she was a baby and he needed to show her he was the older one.

He was amazingly softer than I thought he would be. The lady who was taking the pictures for the actual pictures we'd purchase (which I still have yet to down load to our main computer) got a few really good shots of Elisabeth and Na'vi together.
The whole trip was amazing. On the car ride home, Elisabeth kept looking at her hand and saying, "I can still feel his fur on my hand."

Her face when she touched the wolf for the first time is a memory that I will keep forever.