For most of that period I was employed by the federal government of Canada, and a report on the wolf studies I conducted has been on file with my employer since 1948. Never Cry Wolf is based on two summers and a winter that I spent in the subarctic regions of southern Keewatin Territory and northern Manitoba as a biologist studying wolves and caribou.

For the most part I ignored this yapping at my heels, but perhaps now is a good time to turn, if briefly, upon the pursuing jackals-which is what a proper wolf would do. Others brushed it aside, claiming it was invalid because its author was not a bona fide scientist with at least a doctoral degree. Some dedicated wolf haters, including the far-flung network of those who kill for sport, went so far as to claim it was an outright work of fiction. Because it is my practice never to allow facts to interfere with the truth and because I believe that humor has a vital place in helping us understand our lives, many self-ordained experts derided the book. Never Cry Wolf was not kindly received by some human animals. But somehow I found myself losing interest in their bureaucratic and scientific buffoonery and becoming increasingly engrossed with what had originally been my secondary character-the wolf. With malice aforethought I deliberately set out to expose these new would-be rulers of our world or, rather, to let them expose themselves in the pages of a book. I also thought it might be fun to take the mickey out of the new high priests of our times, the Scientists, who now consider themselves the only legitimate guardians and interpreters of Truth. My original plan was to write a satire about quite a different beast-the peculiar mutation of the human species known as the Bureaucrat who has become the dictatorial arbiter of all our affairs. When I began Never Cry Wolf thirty years ago, I intended to cast the wolf in a rather minor role.

Never cry wolf author