The terrorism alert level has been raised to “high.” Osama is cooperating with Saddam, or is he? North Korea has nukes, probably. They might also have a missile that might be able to hit the United States, but has not been tested. Kim Jung Il says if he doesn't get his way, it will be total war.

They say we should be on guard. It’s not clear how, but we should go about our daily business, somehow on guard. Meanwhile, investment portfolio’s reach new lows. Cutbacks in state programs loom. Increasingly, reports say young people are getting high on Ecstasy, and a recent report even worried there is rampant drug dealing inside Yellowstone National Park.

Threat seems pervasive, but the individual finds direct, palpable, personal threat hard to see. Things just seem to be getting out of control. Many people have a bad case of anxiety. It is hardly surprising.

That we try to relieve this anxiety is no surprise. Social and political remedies for anxiety are well known, having been honed by dictators, demagogues, and double-dealers for millennia.

The standard prescription for this kind of nervousness given by political leaders, local, state and national, is either reassurance or transformation of anxiety to a more solid emotion – fear and anger. Symbolic reassurance is the most commonly prescribed. For example, “Don’t worry, we are only “streamlining” and “modernizing” the laws that protect our environment.” “We need thousands of new power plants, but we have ‘clean coal' technology.” Our logging plan will give us "healthy forests."

How about “We have a new law that will protect your investments from corrupt corporations?” “Our superior armed forces will end the war in several weeks, if not less.” “Casualties will be minimal.” "They will respect us for our power."

I say to all of this, "perhaps so." However, deliberate arousal of fear and anger can work just as well as reassurance. Who can forget the statement of stiletto columnist Anne Coulter’s post 9-11 opinion. “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”

In just two weeks our old friends, the French and Germans, have become opponents, if not enemies.

As I approach my sixth decade of life, experience tells me not be easily reassured by politicians, for they are often not to be trusted. Neither should we be easily alarmed by their rumors of war, apocalyptic terrorism, or drug crazed young people running wild in the streets (or the Parks). The political class has its own agenda, or, more accurately, agendas.

How people deal with this anxiety depends where they live, the opinions of those close to them, and their personalities. This brings us to the resurgent concern that wolves, cougars, and bears are now eyeing us as a tasty treat.

No one has been attacked by a wolf in the lower 48 United States in modern times. Tourists and wolf watchers in Yellowstone and elsewhere wander among wolves and other animals with little fear. The appearance on a ridge of a pack of wolves, howling, fills them with delight. For some it is a spiritual experience. I was told by one person that the appearance of a wolf healed her physical ailments.

To watch the wolves chase down and kill an elk, or see the elk make a grand escape, is a heart-pounding if atavistic event. And it’s a long way from worry about terrorists, chemical or biological weapons, or young people, foreign people, or people of the wrong religion or color running amuck.

While our quiet places of beauty offer blessed relief for many, I have noticed a recent increase in fear of wild animal attacks among some rural people who did not want to see wolf recovery or even the recovery of any animal except livestock and maybe deer or elk.

Here are some recent statements from newspapers or web sites:

"The economic impact [of wolves] is tremendous," _____ said. "When the elk are gone, the ranchers are next."

[wolves] are "land piranhas and wildlife terrorists."

One writer made an outright appeal to the wisdom of folktales.

“As with the stories of Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs we all should know how sneaky wolves can be. They come in the middle of the night and steal away animals, many times not eating their kill. If only people could witness the vicious and torturous way that a pack of wolves can torment their kill.”

Another, this time a Ph.D., wrote"

“There's a place for the wolf. In Yellowstone Park elk and bison numbers are exploding. With numbers far exceeding carrying capacity, the ecology of Yellowstone is being dramatically simplified and degraded. The wolf can help restore nature's dynamic balance where politics precludes responsible management by federal agencies.”

Anxiety about ravenous wolves growing out of control (or maybe elk and bison too, out of control) is soon turned to anger by political activists. Certain kinds of people are said to be to blame, and so they construct the enemy.

“Like Islam has been hijacked by extremists, environmental organizations have been hijacked by extremists. They now threaten to terrorize us with their biological weapon the wolf. We can look forward to being tied up in court for eternity if we try and delist the wolf as an endangered specie from it's un-deserved protected status as; "experimental non-essential". The ultimate strategy is to buy more time for this predator to breed at a 34% rate per year. Each wolf eats a biomass of at least 25 Elk per year; not counting the surplus killing of elk calves. We now have at least 720 wolves; and in 3 short years we could easily be at 1732. This means 43,300 elk per year are going to be fed to wolves without any new replacement calves. Since Montana, according to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation only has 130,000 elk, it wont be long until the wolf turns its attention to beef cattle, in a degree much larger than is already occurring.”

“Wolves, wolves everywhere and not a management plan in place. Are we a test case for wolf introduction or is there a bigger agenda at stake from the environmental elitists?”

This increase in reported fear might be a product of the media feeding off our anxiety – let’s report another scary story. Growing fear of wolves and anger might reflect an increase in political organization by rural traditionalists. It could be an interaction of both, sprouting seeds of paranoia, and violence towards animals or people in what is now fertile soil.

This may be but a rural sidelight to our national nervousness, but let’s hope the beauty and balance of the natives of our natural world are not sacrificed to the efforts of some persons to slay the demons in their minds.