Colorado has had its issues, around wolves. Still does.
Hunters, ranchers, and landowners exterminated the last wolves in Colorado during the 1940s. At the time, this was mostly considered a good thing for everyone, except the wolves. I have no doubt deer and elk were celebrating, along with cattle. And probably rabbits as well.
Colorado wolves tended to kill and eat anything they could get their teeth into.
Humans, meanwhile, have always wanted to be the apex carnivores.
But we’re in the midst of an interesting experiment, here in the Rocky Mountains. The voters have directed Colorado Parks & Wildlife to reintroduce wolves into our environment. Easier said than done, apparently. But it demonstrates how our feelings about wolves have changed over the past 100 years.
Last week, I came across a 2-minute video that’s gone viral, internationally.
Set to the song “Le Mal-Aimé,” by French crooner Claude François, it recounts the transition of a certain Wolf from feared forest predator to a beloved vegetarian chef and eventually sits down to a Christmas dinner with all the animals he once ate for dinner. “Le Mal-Aimé” translates as “The Unloved One”, according to Translate.Google.com.
The video was funded by a French supermarket chain, Intermarché. Apparently, the advertisement has been view more than 30 million times since it was posted on December 6.
One of the recipes featured in the video is Purée de carottes. 4 large or 6 medium carrots, 1 heaping tablespoon crème fraîche, 1 tsp. lemon juice, 1/4 tsp. salt, freshly ground black pepper, 1/4 tsp. ground cumin…
Our opportunities to actually shop at Intermarché grocery stores is rather limited, here in the U.S. But we can still enjoy their video advertisement, which is — in my humble opinion — considerably more entertaining than the City Market ads I am served by YouTube.
Thierry Cotillard, the chairman of Intermarché, celebrated that “our ‘unloved’ wolf is now loved by the entire world” in a post on the LinkedIn social network. He said it was produced over the past year by around 100 hard-working animators, led by Montpellier-based animation company Illogic Studios.
The number of animators is worth mentioning because we’ve been getting bombarded, lately, with animations created by Artificial Intelligence. Such moronic AI creations were referred to, by French journal Le Monde, as “cheap ‘slop’ cartoons”, thus suggesting that the much-loved “Unloved” video was not cheap to produce.
French workers are blessed with a rather amazing range of worker benefits and protections, compared to American workers.
French workers enjoy a 35-hour week, 5 weeks of paid annual leave, comprehensive health, pension, unemployment benefits funded by employer contributions, paid parental leave (16+ weeks for mothers, 25 days for fathers), mandatory supplementary health insurance and significant protections against harassment and discrimination, alongside allowances for transport and meals.
All these benefits are protected by strong labor laws and collective agreements.
But are wolves protected? I mean, in France? Or are they relegated to life as expensive cartoon characters?
According to the Wilderness Society, wolves were exterminated in France by 1940, but began a remarkable return beginning in the 1990s, following adoption of the Bern Convention and the European Habitats Directive.
When the wolves returned, they were, however, still carnivores and had a habit of making a meal of wild and domestic animals. Can the wolves be made into vegetarians, as suggested by the Intermarché video?
My (minimal) research into this question suggests that France is a terrible place to be a vegetarian. Only about 2% of the populace have adopted a vegetarian diet — compared with, for example, about 10% in the UK and around 40% in India. As a result, relatively few restaurants in France offer a selection of vegetarian dishes.
Which I think raises the question: Why would a prominent supermarket chain spend a lot of money funding a video that encourages wolves to become vegetarian? And by inference, encourages its grocery customers to become vegetarians?
Nevertheless, I plan to try out Purée de Carottes, if I can get my hands on some crème fraîche.
No sense being unloved, just because you have a taste for red meat.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.