As we’ve mentioned before, we are always looking for ways to provide stimulating enrichment to the ambassador wolves. So when Rebecca Bose, the WCC curator, recently traveled to India, she took the opportunity to bring back some turmeric, a pungent Indian spice, thinking that the ambassadors would be intrigued by the strange and strong new odor.

So one morning last week we crunched our way through the snow up to the ambassador enclosures with a bagful of the bright yellow powder. I was envisioning the wolves curiously sniffing, ecstatically scent-rolling, inadvertently coloring their fur yellow, and generally having a good time.

As you may have gathered from the title of this entry, things didn’t exactly work out that way. Click here to view photos of this spicy encounter and compare them to photos from the wolves’ experiences the next day with liverwurst imported fresh from Cameron’s Deli in exotic Cross River, NY.