This was a tale from long ago, but it often brings me smiles and chuckles. If I were more honest, it even made me laugh.

It all started with Nathaniel hunting one day. He was a strapping young guy at the wonderful age of eleven years. He had earned the right to hunt with his bow and arrow when he was nine. He rarely missed and was proud that he could keep his family supplied with meat and even sometimes provided the village as well.

I met him when I was seven and he was just under nine. I spent summer vacation playing with the native children.

Anyway, one day when he was hunting, he came across two pups and a mother. The mother and one of the pups had been shot to death. How the pup had survived was anyone's guess.

There was one small problem. The pup was a wolf. Nathaniel had buried the mother wolf and her baby. It looked like the remaining pup had even tried to nurse from his mother. Its eyes were not opened. So, Nathaniel simply picked up the pup by the scruff of the neck and placed him inside his jacket. By the time he got back to the village, it made perfect sense to call him, Wolf.

Its eyes opened about a week after it was introduced to the family and the village. Until then it was bottle fed and had become familiar with Nat's scent. Because I stayed with Nat's family, I was also becoming a familiar scent.

As the pup grew, he discovered he had an affinity for the love of moccasins. For some reason it was always the left one he chose, never the right one. It only took two chewed moccasins for people to learn to either keep them up high or to put them under something he couldn't get under.

We would entice him outside with a left moccasin-yes, he could tell the difference.

It has been many years since Nathaniel had him put down because of the effects of old age but we still chuckle about the adventures we had together.

We laugh mostly about the fact that fully grown he was about 200 pounds but was always a puppy at heart. He was well loved and loved being around people.