The background here is that last year, in a fall trip into Bernard Lake, a lake in the northwest end of the Bear Valley, Cocoa-Brownie walked away from us with all my gear on him, and didn't show up until the next day... sans saddle, panniers, in other words, all my gear. So the described trip is just one more attempt to locate whatever would be left of this equipment.
******************************************
Friday night (June 12) I returned to a camp spot that I was familiar with off the main road (north end of Bear Valley), ate dinner, did a couple of walkabouts, high lined the boys and attempted to call it a night.

Ezra (my Alpine goat), however, was having none of it. Quite frankly, he was acting 100% nuts. Scratching, no not scratching, but digging, like mad, then looking around, testing the limits of the high line, then digging some more, then dancing around. Not normal behaviors as they have spent many a night high lined in the woods.

Much later on I finally gave up and figured that if I was going to get any sleep, I was going to have to put the goats back in the truck. Which I did. Rest of night uneventful.

The next day, did 7 miles (lots of climbing and almost all off-trail) or so in the area looking for the lost gear, came up with nothing, went back to another site, very close to Friday night's campsite, high lined the boys, they lay right down and that was that, or so I thought. More or less 2-3AM, a pack of wolves began to sound off very close to where we were camped. In response another pack began to howl across the creek from pack #1.

I went nuts, exploded out of the tent, didn’t even take the time to put shoes on, and rushed the boys into the truck. Spent some time there myself, but came to the conclusion that I was going to have to reenter the tent if I was ever going to get any sleep.

Next day, took precious little brainpower to figure out the why of Ezra’s behavior the night previous. Looking at the maps below it was obvious that the first night we were camped in wolf central. Ezra knew it, heard them, saw them or smelled them, and attempted to let me know that he had no desire to act as wolf bait. What a wimp!