At this time of year, the male caribou sport enormous osteoporosis-inducing racks. These are indulged in for the sake of pure vanity. Once the rutting season is over, the males will shed their equipage for the thousand-mile trek home. The pregnant females (the only female deer to have antlers) will keep theirs, however, not to fend off the wolves that are their constant escorts but to do battle with other female caribou that may encroach upon the small feeding territory they establish for their surviving offspring. In the harsh symbiosis that links caribou and wolf, it is hard not to root for the predators. I saw caribou grazing in Denali's Massachusetts-size confines, but wolves (unlike grizzlies) are rarely spotted. The only ones we saw were in a 20-year-old Robert Redford documentary, the first to track the wolf/caribou convoy. It's not pleasant to watch a well-coordinated wolf trio take down a straggling caribou, but the handsome wolves, with their friendly, cooperative family life, are awfully likable. There is no recorded case of a wolf killing a person in Alaska. The same, alas, cannot be said for the grizzlies--or for the human inhabitants.