Two Toes

By spreading a net around one end of a fallen hollow tree, hunters in Arkansas last week caught a 98-lb. timber wolf with only two toes on his right hind paw.

For ten years this wolf, called Two Toes because of mutilations suffered escaping from traps, had led his hungry pack through the forests of eastern Arkansas. The pack killed hundreds of sheep, goats, cows. Near the scattered bones enraged cattle owners always found the tracks of a huge, two-toed paw.

Trappers, hunters, government rangers tried constantly and unsuccessfully to kill Two Toes. Last fortnight he and his pack killed 14 goats in one day. Describing this as murder, Sheriff E. L. Cooper and Deputy Prosecuting Attorney James Robertson of Cross County, Ark., called for the best hounds in the state and a posse of huntsmen. They found the pack at dawn, separated Two Toes from his followers, cornered him at noon. Tired, fiery-eyed, froth-mouthed and snarling, he made his last stand in the hollow of the fallen log. He was taken to Memphis, Tenn., to spend the rest of his life in a cage at the Zoo.

P: In Stanford, Mont., last month, a famed white wolf without a name, who has killed hundreds of sheep and cows in the Little Belt range, was pursued by five hounds and A. V. Cheney of Wolf Butte. Cornered by the dogs, the white wolf escaped because only one of the hounds dared attack him, because A. V. Cheney had no rifle.

P: In the U. S., where wolves have largely ceased to be a serious menace to humans, there are few organizations devoted to their slaughter though some western states offer wolf bounties. In France, where wolves still haunt the forests, there are still "wolf lieutenants"--landowners who, in return for protecting large portions of the terrain from wolves by maintaining packs of wolfhounds, are entitled to hunt government forests for wild boar. Among noted wolf lieutenants are two women, the Dowager Duchess d'Uzes and Mme Alice Abram Terras of Lambesc-Salen, who wears a man's uniform.

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