There is an unspoken conversation with death between the wolf and it's prey. The outcome of the hunt is usually settled in the first moment, the moment of eye contact between the animals. What transpires between those moments of staring between predator and prey is probably a complex exchange of information regarding the appropriateness of a chase and a kill. This encounter is the conversation of death.
The conversation falters noticeably when wolves encounter domestic stock, animals that have had the language of death bred out of them. The domestic horse will almost always panic and run. It will always be killed. When a wolf encounters a herd of sheep, it kills in anger and frustration, because there is no fight to live. Therefore, the wolf has not accomplished anything.
There must be that ritual and choice. There is nobility in such a death. The wolf grows strong eating an animal that knows how to die with it's whole heart. He wastes away on the flesh of animals that do not know how to live or how to die.
Preditor and prey grow stronger together by means of a series of tests, through all the years of their lives; tests that pit them against each other at both psychological and psysiological levels; tests that weed both culturally and genetically.
