There is in the United States one of the most wonderful animals in the world--the American gray wolf. He is perhaps the only animal in the world _that has beaten man_!
I mean this: Man has killed off many four-footed wild animals; that is, he has killed so many of those animals in a place, that they have _died out_ in that place. He has not succeeded in killing off the American gray wolf.
In some places man has almost killed off certain animals, even when he did not _want_ to do so. He killed the animal merely for sport or for profit--but he did not want that species of animal to die out altogether; for then he could not have any more sport or profit from it. And yet, the hunter killed so many of that species of animal that it has almost died out in some places. In this manner, as I have already told you, almost all the elephants have been killed off in parts of Africa, for the sake of sport or for the sake of the tusks. In the same way, the buffalo has almost disappeared from the United States.
From a photograph copyrighted by the New York Zoological Society.]
But in the case of the American wolf, man _wanted_ to kill him off altogether as a race of animals; and yet he has not been able to do so. At first the hunter may have killed the wolf only for the sake of its fur; but in the last few years the American farmer and the ranchman have tried to wipe out the wolf altogether as a _pest_--because the wolf kills their sheep and cattle. And yet, the wolf flourishes in the West. He has beaten the farmer and the ranchman.
The wonderful part of it is that the American wolf has beaten man _by his own efforts_. And for an animal to beat man in that manner is a great achievement.
I have told you before that one animal has to use its gifts against another animal, to protect itself from danger; for instance, the fish has to look out for the jaguar, and the jaguar in his turn has to look out for the alligator. But in that competition of the jungle, the animal has generally to use its wits merely against another animal--not against man. But the American wolf had to use his wits against man; and he has beaten man, as I shall describe to you.
_The American Wolf Learns to Evade the Gun_