The Day Cinderella Vanished
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — A grim chorus of howls shattered the predawn stillness. As darkness gave way to dim light, a wolf emerged in a clearing.
He was charcoal gray, with a splash of black fur marking his snout and eyes. He sat up tall, his head thrown back in a long, desolate moan. His hot breath froze when it hit the air, leaving shards of ice dangling from his muzzle.
Two miles to the southwest, two other wolves howled excitedly from the crest of 9,000-foot Specimen Ridge. Their calls were answered by another group whose voices echoed from the direction of Tower Junction, near the Yellowstone River.
"There are three packs out there," said wildlife biologist Greg Wright as he watched the animals through a high-powered lens. "You don't usually hear this much howling. It could be a territorial dispute, but I'm not sure what's going on."
Soon, it would be clear. The gray lady -- the Cinderella wolf -- was missing.
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When gray wolves returned to Yellowstone National Park nearly a decade ago, the park became one of the few places in the Lower 48 states where the secretive animals could be seen in the wild.
Their reappearance in Yellowstone after a nearly 70-year absence has rekindled an ancient fascination with Canis lupus, the planet's largest wild dog. The wolves have inspired websites, books and a cult of wolf-watchers who monitor their activities from dawn to dusk.
Of 174 wolves in the park, two attained celebrity status: the female nicknamed Cinderella and her longtime mate, a charcoal gray male. Park researchers called the pair "the Hollywood wolves," because of two National Geographic documentaries that focused on them and their family, the Druid Peak Pack. To many, they became the embodiment of Yellowstone's wild wolf program.
So Cinderella's absence and her mate's disconsolate wails on that Sunday morning in February stirred special concern among the wolf-watchers.
Wolf populations in the western U.S. were wiped out in the late 1800s and early 1900s by settlers and bounty hunters. The last wolf in Yellowstone was shot in 1926. The animals were not reintroduced to the park until 1995 and 1996, when biologists captured 31 gray wolves in the Canadian Rockies and let them loose in Yellowstone.
