Wild America

Our most common wild feline is a perfectly designed predator -- quick and clever enough to capture a tiny Meadow Mouse, yet formidable enough to bring down a full-grown Deer. Prey can become play, for this solitary hunter sometimes pesters its captured quarry to death. Easily confused with its cousin, the Lynx, the Bobcat flourishes in close proximity to humans.

Most predators and prey have evolved in unison. They are so closely matched that every day is an "Animal Olympics." Intimately linked together are two birds -- the speedy Goshawk and the alert Ruffed Grouse. Many predators pursue the Grouse, but none is so well-adapted to catch it as the Goshawk. This is the story of an unerringly precise natural balance.

Through the night, a ravenous predator stalks its unwary prey. With a swift bite to the skull, it slays the victim, then throws back its head and howls. But this beast that hunts like a Weasel and howls like a Wolf is neither -- it's the five-inch Grasshopper Mouse of our western deserts and plains. It feasts on Tarantulas, Scorpions, and even other Rodents -- yet displays close family ties.

Elegant and graceful, the Lynx is one of Nature's finest physical specimens. Its primary quarry is the elusive Snowshoe Hare. It is seen that the numbers of predator and prey -- Lynx and Snowshoe Hare -- are intricately linked in a ten-year cycle that rises and falls in unison. This fascinating, unexplained phenomenon is only one of many mysteries in the Great North Woods.

In a frigid landscape, a Polar Bear emerges from her maternity den with cubs. The Innuit people call this largest predator on earth "Nanook" and bestow upon it spiritual power. Most admired by the native people is the mother Bear which, over the course of two or three years, will fearlessly protect and patiently teach her cubs how to survive in their beautiful, high Arctic home.

Each summer, as Salmon make their spawning run, a gathering of the largest carnivores in North America also takes place. Up to a hundred huge Brown Bears line up along the McNeil River in Alaska. Each Bear stakes out and defends its fishing territory. The cast of characters includes sows with playful cubs, battle-scarred boars, and juveniles, with comical fishing styles.

The Grizzly Bear is funny and ferocious, a quivering coward and a daring hero, easily tamed yet forever wild. This disappearing giant is one of the most contradictory and complex of all our animal ideas. In this program, the entire spectrum of our attitudes toward the Grizzly are examined as well as the animal itself. Rare footage reveals the birth of tiny cubs during the female's winter denning.

On the Arctic tundra, predator and prey alike are aided by fur or feathers the color of snow. Some, like the Gyrfalcon and Snowy Owl, stay white year round; others, like Ptarmigan and Snowshoe Hare, turn white for winter. Forcing its inhabitants to migrate, adapt, or perish, the world's harshest, yet most sensitive, environment is the setting for a continual life-and-death drama.

Witness the wondrous birth of tiny twin Deer fawns, and see wide-eyed Wolf pups emerge from their den. Both the Deer and the Wolf are followed through their age of innocence into maturity, when -- finally -- during a winter hunt, both the young Deer and the young Wolf assume their traditional adult roles as predator and prey. We see that each one is half of a beautiful natural whole.

Is this beast really a ravenous monster? The Wolverine is a rarely-glimpsed, and thus much misunderstood, scavenger with tremendous strength. It is the source of many legends. The Indians regarded it as a supernatural being. Here we see the real Wolverine in the rugged land it shares with Wolf, Red Fox and Snowshoe Hare -- and we learn why this wandering loner deserves our respect.