Dan Flores

And it's this kind of remarkable story to me.

And one of the things I wanted to say here, because I think it is a remarkable thing, is that we can't

we can't delude ourselves that we have created a completely tamed, as it were, emasculated country when you can look out the window of your house in a suburb anywhere in America and see a jackal-sized wolf trotting down the street, glancing at you with highways and houses behind it as it goes by.

I mean, that's a kind of a rare wildlife victory in America that you don't get to enjoy very much.

That's what it looks like, you know?

And I, I mean, I got to experience it as a kid growing up in Louisiana.

I got to experience a little bit of what this was because when I was younger and

Uh, and you know, being a kid who grew up in a small town with the woods, a hundred yards away.

I mean, from the time I was really little, I was going out into the woods and hanging out on creeks and, and, uh, looking at the natural world.

But from the time I was, you know, six or seven years old, my parents would let me do that.

Um,

Up until the time I was about 13 or 14, I never saw a coyote or what, when they first started showing up in Louisiana, what people referred, they called them wolves.

I never saw a single one, never even occurred to me that there might be something like that.

And all of a sudden, one day, here is this animal that...

To me, it was like rounding a corner in New Orleans and having a moose be standing on the street on the intersection.

Suddenly, here was an animal that I in no way expected to ever be in Louisiana, and here it was.

And as I started paying attention, they were there more and more and more.

And what I realized later on, I began to, in fact, engage with biologists at Louisiana Parks and Wildlife.

What's going on?

I think I'm seeing these—and they—