Bite the Wolf

This blog is getting a tad weird, so here's an entry that's not just a brain dump.   It's a couple stories my brother-in-law told me.   He and his brother had a couple of half-wild Alaskan friends named Billy and Duck Factor ("I swear that's his name," he said.  I've never known him by anything else and I'm pretty sure it's on his birth certificate.") Both of these guys had more than a touch of mad Yukon trapper syndrome, and hadn't had much contact with civilization.

 Billy lived in a Quonset hut way out in the bush and looked just like a caveman--sloping forehead, single shaggy eyebrow, dragging knuckles.  When Billy came to California on a visit he was so flabbergasted by the San Francisco airport's moving sidewalks, escalators, and luggage carousels that he "nearly had a fit.  It was a real live yokel vs. machine moment.  His jaw kept flapping and his eyes rolled around like Magic 8 Balls.

 "When we loaded Billy into the front seat of the car, the automatic seat belt attacked him--at least from his perspective.  It wrapped around his neck a bit and he went ape!  Flailing around and bellowing and banging on the windows of my mom's car.   "Don't strangle me, man!  Why?! WHY?!'  " My brother was kind of gingerly saying stuff like 'Uh, careful there, you might break the glass.  Careful there . . .'  The rest of the visit he looked at us out the corners of his eyes, as if we were planning have him kidnapped by a UFO.

"Duck Factor had a wolf, a real live wild Alaskan timber wolf as a pet, and he had a ritual he'd go through with the wolf, something he called the 100,00 mile tune-up. It was an alpha male kind of thing.  He'd shove the wolf over and get it on its back with its paws up in the air.  The submissive position.  Then he'd pounce and bury his face in the wolf's neck and bite the wolf."

"Are you telling me a man named Duck Factor bit a wild wolf?"  I asked.

"He bit the wolf real hard, really sink his human choppers into the wolf's throat.  Then the wolf would behave better in mixed company until it was time for the next tune-up."