The mischievous sunka (wolf)
It was at 4AM when I woke up this morning. I just had a dream about a wolf that was prowling around at the Commodity Shop. See, what had happened was…
I was in Black River Falls, doing my usual visits to my usual haunts. After having stopped at the Ho-Chunk Nation Executive Building, I strolled on over to the Commodity Shop; or in my case, hobbled on over. It was broad daylight outside. Not a shadow could be seen anywhere. The sky was bright and blue. The trees were a vivid green. The black top was, well, you guessed it, black. The only reason why I’m mentioning colors is because people generally do not dream in color; only occasionally. It’s like that way for me, also. I only dream in color on rare occasions. So, when it does happen, I try to pay attention to what I’m seeing (at least in retrospect because when these kinds of dreams happen, they are so real I don’t realize I’m dreaming).
So, there I was, walking up to the entrance of the Commodity Shop but couldn’t get in. The door was locked. Looked like the lights were out. The exit door was open. I saw somebody coming out. The door stayed open, so I walked over to it. I was intent on seeing Andy (a friend).
Just as I got to the door, I heard some growling behind me. I turned around and saw a timber wolf walking along the tree line. I stopped and watched it. The wolf was young; a juvenile; black and white; shiny fur; white, sharp teeth. It left the tree line and started trotting towards me.
I suppose I could’ve just gone inside the building, but nooooo! I just had to start walking towards the wolf. It lunged at me. I caught it by its gaping mouth. I held its mouth open with my hands and proceeded to drag it towards the open door of the Commodity Shop. Why would anybody in their right mind put their hands inside the mouth of a lunging timber wolf? My palms were on its snout and lower jaw and my bare fingers were inside its mouth, pulling the teeth apart. Why would somebody do that? Hmmmm…pure insanity.
Got me to thinking about dogs being messengers. Way, waay, waaaaay back a long time ago, the Great Spirit used wolves (dogs) as his messengers. Whenever the Great Spirit wanted to tell people something, he gave the message to the wolf and sent it to the people. During a time when two tribes of people were living peacefully with each other, the Great Spirit sent the wolf to the people with a message. The wolf, however, feeling kind of mischievous, mixed up the message. This led to a war between the people.
In time, the Great Spirit made everything turn out the way he planned, but from that time on he made it so that the wolf, when it was being passive to a dominant authority, would pull its tail up to the side of its leg.
Strangeness. Who in their right mind would deliberately put their hands inside the mouth of a wolf, so as to keep it from…being mischievous?
photo from https://pixabay.com/photos/wolf-yawn-mouth-fangs-predator-2872222/
Thomas S. Tourtillott- Contributing Writer
Then I woke up. Hee hee
