If a wolf digs a hole, you better not stand behind it. Then he scratches the ground and, like a dog, throws the earth up into the air between his hind legs. He digs to play, or out of curiosity, for a molehill for example. Or to make a den, a tunnel with a room attached to it, for a mother with her puppies.
Or, like this summer, to escape.
“Here, here in that corner.” From the footpath, Willem Verdonck (43), head of animal care at Amersfoort Zoo, points to a hole in the ground. The hole, half a meter wide, is right on the other side of the fence, in the wolf enclosure. It is sealed with branches and shrubs and now, underground, also with reinforced concrete.
Willem Verdonck, who has been working at the park for 23 years, still finds it unimaginable that a wolf dug a hole exactly at this spot. “Supernatural”, actually. Because the zookeepers regularly check the burrows in the enclosure, they even encourage digging, which is why sand has been deposited, ‘part of their natural behaviour’. But never before have holes been made in the earthen wall along the grid, which runs diagonally two meters underground. And if the wolf had tried – Verdonck points past the fence – “there, there, or there, or there, or there”, it would not have worked.
The zoo workers later dug out the entire fence around the enclosure and checked for weak spots and found no way to slip under it. Except here, in this spot, where the underground grid had probably receded slightly because of the tree roots. Verdonck: “The chance of winning the lottery is greater.”
Tongue out of the mouth
On Monday, August 30, around noon, a male and a female – from a pack of eight wolves – escaped by digging out of the enclosure. Visitors were called upon to entrench themselves in indoor locations, for example in the catering industry, while employees located the animals, stunned them and finally returned them to their accommodation in a trolley. That all took about half an hour and everything seemed okay. Until two days later one of the escaped wolves died. Heart failure, the autopsy later revealed. Stress, possibly, because there had been unrest about the hierarchy in the pack for some time.
The consequences for the zoo were huge. Videos of the roaming wolves flooded the internet and disturbed eyewitnesses told their stories in the media. The Party for the Animals asked parliamentary questions. Last year, two chimpanzees had also escaped from the zoo because a zookeeper had not properly closed the enclosure. Shouldn’t the permit even be revoked? Meanwhile, caretakers tried to restore peace in the pack while the technical service turned the enclosure upside down to expose weaknesses and Willem Verdonck’s office was trampled by inspectors, managers, colleagues and journalists.
The wolf escape from Amersfoort Zoo was the animal news of the year, according to an internet poll by the youth news earlier this month. With 21 percent of the 7,055 votes, it ended in favor of blue dogs in Russia (something with chemicals) and a white shark swimming towards Europe.
Repair to the accommodation
“Wolves are real runners, miles long.” Willem Verdonck looks fascinated at the wolves on the other side of the fence. They run in circles, tongues out, and sometimes one jumps over a water feature. “Normally you don’t see them that active.”
Since the lockdown, the wolves barely see people, so now that someone is standing by the fence, it is extra noticeable. The animals observe more, Verdonck also sees that in the other animals in the park. Normally, when it’s busy, “they only see the crowd.” Some animals do react when Verdonck walks by. The chimpanzees, the elephants, they know him. But not the wolves, they are timid animals. Definitely the kind they have in this zoo since 2015, the Scandinavian. It is used to living in vast forests and tundras, much larger habitats than the Eastern European species that are now appearing in the wild everywhere in the Netherlands, this month in the Prunjepolder in Zeeland.
Her shyness, Verdonck thinks, may have also contributed to the escape. Because, he is convinced of that, there are always several reasons for this.
There was work being done on the residence that morning. A colleague from the technical service was working on a repair to the adjacent separation enclosure, intended to be able to separate the wolves if necessary. The slide jammed and the colleague had to tap it hard a few times with a hammer to get it loose. An animal caretaker, who in the meantime kept an eye on the wolves, saw that they were startled by the loud noise: running, ears back, making noise, snapping at each other.
Disturbed relationships
The wolves often display such behavior, also to determine the hierarchy within the group. Because wolves live in packs – an alpha pair and usually two or three litters. That’s easily about fifteen wolves and in the Scandinavian species, which hunts large prey such as moose, there are sometimes even more. And then there is always something going on: giving each other a blow, aggressive behavior, until one is kicked out of the group, often the eldest son, who goes for a walk to start his own pack elsewhere. With wolves, the group size can vary from twenty-five to three, five, fifteen and each time, just like in the schoolyard, the hierarchy is determined anew. And because of their shyness, just like with a bunch of introverted kids, you don’t always see what’s going on.
“We already saw in this group that something was going on,” says Verdonck. “But not yet like: hey, it escalates. More like with dogs that see each other in the forest: correct each other a bit and then it’s done.” Only later, when the escaped wolves had been reinstated, did observation show that the mutual relationships had probably been more seriously disrupted than had been thought. It was probably the mutual aggression plus the hard tapping of the hammer on the slide that, according to Verdonck, acted as ‘double fuel’. The zookeeper who watched just before the escape saw behavior that he had never seen before in the wolves: they jumped in several places “like lions” against the fences, in ten seconds they shot “from fear to blind panic”.
Willem Verdonck, busy with the administration, received a phone call in his office shortly afterwards. “The wolves have escaped,” said one employee. And guest services also called to say that visitors had called 911 after seeing a wolf walk. At the same time, he also received a message on his walkie-talkie. Verdonck walked at a brisk pace – don’t run, you’ll cause panic – towards the wolf enclosure, about two hundred meters away.
It feels like his duty to go out. And yes, if it had been a lion he would have done it too. Although last year, when he came face to face with the escaped chimpanzee Mike, that almost went wrong. The animal showed impressive behavior and it was later decided to shoot him – stunning would take too long. But a wolf, that’s different. Fueled by fascination, myth and Little Red Riding Hood, people see the wolf as dangerous and evil, says Verdonck. But wolves are actually afraid of humans. “I’d rather have two wolves escape than two camels.”
At the family swing
One of the escaped wolves kept wandering around the enclosure, leaping against the gate as if trying to get back inside. The other walked past the badger castle straight into Dino Park, straight at a T-Rex with its mouth wide open. The wolf ran restlessly back and forth, also past Willem Verdonck, while visitors, sometimes taking a step back, filmed with their telephones. They were led away so that employees could form a human circle around the wolf and the vet could calmly inject the correct dose into his anesthetic arrow. And pás, there he went, close to the family swing. Meanwhile, the other wolf was also stunned and captured. Everything under control, Verdonck thought. Until two days later he found one of the wolves dead in his enclosure. “That has had a major impact on all of us.”
The large aggressive individuals turned out to be two females, dominant types, who were then placed separately from the group. Now, four months later, the wolves are being monitored more closely. The atmosphere in the pack is good again and the zoo is still looking for a new place for the two females.
“And here he hopped over this fence,” says Verdonck, pointing to the separation of the plant border next to the footpath. “And then he has here, in this little flower bed…” Verdonck shakes his head. Because honestly, he still doesn’t understand it. That a wolf dug a hole just in that one spot. Was that luck? Instinct? Supernatural powers? “That’s the beauty of the animal kingdom. It continues to surprise you.” Apologizing: “Now I almost sound like Freek Vonk.”
Also read this reader letter: Putting back in the pack was asking for trouble
photos Ilvy Njiokiktjien
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 31 December 2021
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of December 31, 2021
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