داستان انگلیسی بزرگ شده توسط گرگ ها

ACTIVE LISTENING MAIN STORY

RAISED BY WOLVES

Many people say that they love their animals like family members, but is it a two way street? Can animals really love humans? Some would say no. They explain away the affection of a dog or cat for a human, as just a means to an end. The human provides food and safety, and so the animals try to bond to ensure they keep getting the resources they need to survive. Marcos Pantoja would disagree.

At just six years old, Marcos was sold by his father to an old shepherd. Marcos and the shepherd lived together on the mountainside until the old man suddenly died, leaving Marcos all alone in Spain’s Sierra Morena Mountains.

In the beginning, Marcos survived by catching rabbits and partridges for food using traps he made out of leaves and sticks. Soon, he began to use animals as guides leading him to unexpected sources of food. For example, when the wild boars smelled tubers, they began to dig with their snouts. Marcos learned that if he threw a stone towards the digging boars, they would run away and then he could quickly gather the remaining wild tubers.

Marcos developed special bonds with certain animals and he began feeling less alone in the mountains. The most special bond of all was his bond with the wolves.

One day not long after the shepherd died, Marcos wandered into a cave. Inside, he found a pack of wolf cubs. Though at first he was frightened, he entered anyway and even began to play with the cubs. He played with the cubs until he grew tired and eventually fell asleep inside the dark cave.

He awoke when the mother wolf returned to the cave ready to feed her cubs the meat she carried.

She ripped the raw meat apart and pushed it towards the cubs but ignored the young boy sitting nearby. Marcos was very hungry, so when a cub came close to Marcos with meat, he tried to steal it.

The mother wolf immediately stepped between Marcos and the cub and pushed him away, preventing him from taking the cub’s meat. Feeling nervous, he began to back further away from the wolves.

But before Marcos reached the opening of the cave, something surprising happened. The mother wolf finished feeding her cubs, and threw a piece of meat towards Marcos. He was scared that she might attack him if he grabbed for it, so he stayed still. After a tense moment, she began pushing the meat towards him with her nose. Feeling more confident, Marcos grabbed the meat and eagerly ate it. Again the mother wolf stepped towards him, and he thought she might bite him. Instead, she stuck her tongue out and started to lick him. From then on, she treated him like a member of her wolf pack.

Marcos had a new animal family and his loneliness faded further away.

Marcos felt like he’d found a real home on the mountain and was only lonely when he could not hear animals. Whenever this happened, he would imitate the animal sounds and wait for an answer. He was able to copy the call of several different types of animals, and even now, decades later he can still reproduce the sounds of the eagle, the fox, the deer, and many others. Once the animals returned his call, he felt comforted and immediately relaxed because he knew he had not been abandoned.

Marcos lived in harmony with his animal family for 12 years. During this time, he was completely without human interaction. Grunts, growls, and other animal sounds replaced words.

When he was 19 years old, a military officer spotted Marcos on the mountain side. His hair was down to his waist and his skin was very tan and covered with scars. He was wearing only a deerskin and his feet were rough from a life without shoes. He could barely speak a single word. He refused to follow the officer and in the end was taken by force to a nearby village where his father was brought to identify him.

Marcos never had a close relationship with his father and he felt nothing when he saw him. The only thing his father said when they met again after 12 years apart was, “Where is your jacket?” Because Marcos couldn’t speak and had no family willing to care for him, local nuns brought him to stay with them and helped him to relearn everything about society. The first time he saw a bowl of soup, he looked at it carefully, but couldn’t decide what to do with it. Finally, he plunged his hands into the steaming hot soup, and tried to scoop some out, but the soup was so hot it made him jump from his seat. The bowl flew into the air and then broke into pieces as it hit the floor.

For Marcos, returning to society was the scariest thing he had ever done. He wanted to escape back to the mountains because living in the city was too overwhelming. The noises of the city hurt his ears. Going to the barbershop was traumatic too. When he saw the razor he became frightened that the barber would cut his throat. Even sleeping in a bed seemed strange to him and he preferred sleeping on magazines and newspapers on the floor.

What bothered Marcos the most was the busyness of human communities. The constant movement of the people reminded him of confused ants running in all different directions.

Life was tough away from his mountains and his wolf family. With time, he learned to speak and walk fully upright, but he remained naïve about life in a human society. People continuously took advantage of him by swindling him out of money or conning him into giving things away for free.

He worked one job after another until he suffered a work-related injury and began receiving government assistance.

Marcos says that after he was removed from the mountains, he thought about going back many times, but eventually he grew accustomed to his new way of life. Over time, he met a girlfriend and got used to living in society. To this day, people who know him describe Marcos as a bit childish, but a very good person.

When the story of Marcos first went public, skeptics often attempted to discredit him by claiming that he had made parts of his story up. Many people didn’t believe that a wolf pack would raise a human child as their own, but Marcos never wavered. His story remained exactly the same no matter who interviewed him or how much time had passed.

There are some animal cognition scientists who claim that Marcos naively believed that the wolves were acting kindly towards him. But in reality, the wolves were only using him to find food. This is a mentality that pervades much of our modern day beliefs about animals. Some animal behaviorists claim that animals lack the ability to be emotional or to form bonds that are not based on reproduction or access to food.

However, international canine expert Cesar Milan disagrees. According to Cesar all animals, especially dogs are capable of forming strong bonds with humans that have little to do with survival.

In fact, there have been several reports of dogs selflessly sacrificing themselves to save their human friend. In Kazakhstan, a dog saved a man’s life by dragging him off of the railroad tracks as the train sped toward him. Unfortunately, the dog was unable to save himself, and died during the heroic act.

Yet, some skeptics still doubt that animals can love humans, but these people may be telling us more about humans than about animals. Humans sometimes think of animals as no more than a possession, a meal, or an inconvenience. This way of thinking makes it easier for humans to justify destroying animal habitats or raising farm animals in terrible conditions. Our planet is experiencing a mass extinction due mostly to manmade pollution and deforestation. We are losing species at more than 1,000 times the normal rate. Scientists predict that by mid-century, 30-50 percent of all species will be on the verge of extinction and humans are to blame.

The circumstances that connected Marcos with the animal world are certainly rare and unlikely to happen again, but his story shows that humans are not alone in being able to give and receive love.

As we continue to learn more about the rich emotional lives of animals, perhaps we can extend our idea of family beyond our immediate families to all forms of life that we share this planet with.

When all the trees have been cut down,

when all the animals have been hunted,

when all the waters are polluted,

when all the air is unsafe to breathe,

only then will you discover you cannot eat money.

~ A Cree Prophecy ~