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An American red wolf at Fossil Rim Wildlife Center.
Garrett Gosdin/Fossil Rim Wildlife Center
The wolf is already moving when Jason Ahistus opens the gate, a gray-orange shadow slipping silently through the brush on long, loping legs. Ahistus steps inside easily, shutting the gate behind him. He moves through the enclosure, checking the den, changing the water dish: furtive movements orbit him, the fact of his presence in the enclosure repelling its occupant as surely as one magnet pushes away another.
“They’re always this shy,” Ahistus says as he comes back toward the fence. Thirty feet behind him, a solemn canine face appears from behind a tree, ears pricked, then withdraws. “Especially the more people there are. Sometimes they stand and look at you as you’re walking up, but you come into the enclosure and they just vanish.”