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Vicious: Wolves and Men in America QUOTES

Vicious: Wolves and Men in America QUOTES

1 " Wolves attack the hindquarters of prey first, biting into the animal's meaty rump or ham. They stay away from the tendons near the hooves. People hamstring wolves, wolves do not hamstring prey. Hard, sharp, and lethal, hooves are the last things wolves want near their heads. They aim for the flanks, grasping for a hold in the large muscles, hoping to bring the mammal down. A trip, a stumble, a fall, and the wolves go for the throat. The animals in the rear begin feasting as their partners crush and remove the herbivore's windpipe. "

― , Vicious: Wolves and Men in America

2 " Vulnerability--not hunger, not anger, and certainly not spite--is the key to predator-prey relationships. The skill and viciousness of the hunter matters less than the size, speed, strength, health, and ferocity of the hunted. Vulnerability explains why large predators tend to kill the old, young, and sick members of prey populations. Predators eat the mild and weak because those are the animals they can catch and kill. "

― , Vicious: Wolves and Men in America

3 " Urban Americans lost the tactile experience of raising food. They neither heard the squeals, nor smelled he offal, nor saw the blood, nor tasted the rage when predators swallowed a cherished investment. "

― , Vicious: Wolves and Men in America

4 " The wolf legends demanded immediate revenge. Groups of colonists entered the forest, killed the predators, and restored their mastery over nature in a day… the legends offered a quick solution: regeneration through violence "

― , Vicious: Wolves and Men in America

5 " They destroyed wolves for a host of pragmatic reasons: to safeguard livestock, to knit local ecosystems into global capitalist markets, to collect state-sponsored bounties, and to rid the world of beasts they considered evil, wild, corrupt, and duplicitous. "

― , Vicious: Wolves and Men in America

6 " To overpower savagery one must lash out savagely. In their stories Euro-American colonists invented and broadcast a vision of wolves as threats to human safety. They then modeled their behavior on the ferocity they perceived in wolves. Thus folklore explains not only why humans destroyed wolves but why they did so with such cruel enthusiasm. "

― , Vicious: Wolves and Men in America

7 " They saluted the last wolves. Sure, they devoured property, but they did so with enthusiasm and panache. The animals had to die, but the humans felt nostalgic about their passing. "

― , Vicious: Wolves and Men in America

8 " As Richard Slotkin has argued, frontier cultural forms that stressed regeneration through violence excused all kinds of nasty behavior. The myth freed colonists to chop heads, fire villages, and torture animals. This was wholesome, conservative brutality; atrocities committed in the name of order, authority, and decorum. Travelers’ tales and circle hunts made wildlife abuse socially acceptable. Regeneration through violence rested on the assumption (many times the delusion) of powerlessness. Wolves never threatened humans physically, but they devoured livestock, and colonists identified with their animal property. "

― , Vicious: Wolves and Men in America

9 " Wolves rarely attack humans, and they do not howl at the moon. (There is no record of a nonrabid wolf killing a human in North America since the arrival of Europeans.)” They are neither innate cowards nor wanton killers. "

― , Vicious: Wolves and Men in America

10 " The story of wolf killing illustrates the tenacity of two Euro-American conquering devices—folklore and property. Folklore fueled wolf hatred through rituals and legends codified into motifs and transmitted by word of mouth. Wolf lore survived by being remembered and retold, while property in the form of livestock also traveled across landscapes and lifetimes. "

― , Vicious: Wolves and Men in America

11 " When they sank their teeth into cows, goats, pigs, and sheep, wolves committed sins unimaginable to them. "

― , Vicious: Wolves and Men in America

12 " Wolves and people were not natural enemies. The humans’ relationship with other animals established their rivalry with wolves. "

― , Vicious: Wolves and Men in America

13 " Given humans’ tendency to see themselves as the pivots around which all creatures’ lives spun, the bewildered travelers assumed the wolves were talking to them. "

― , Vicious: Wolves and Men in America

14 " Instead of modifying their beliefs, institutions, politics, and property systems to fit their environment, humans enter habitats and alter them to suit their cultures. "

― , Vicious: Wolves and Men in America