Mother Wolf released Washer and let him sit up again. She squatted down before him and looked into his eyes.
“I don’t believe wolves have what you call imagination,” she replied. “No, I’m sure they don’t. Tell me more what it means.”
Washer was a very young little Raccoon to be instructing a full-grown wolf, but all of his family had been born with imagination. He could remember how he and his brothers had often listened to the storms raging through the woods and had tried to imagine how it would feel without any home to protect them. They had shuddered at the thought and crept closer together in their nest. But it was very difficult to tell in words just what imagination was.
“Why, there isn’t much more to tell,” he replied hesitatingly. “It’s something you have to feel. Have you ever been hurt, Mother Wolf?”
“Yes, I burnt my front paw once in a fire that campers had left in the woods.”
“And it hurt terribly, didn’t it?”
Mother Wolf winced and nodded.
“Then,” added Washer triumphantly, “if you can feel it now you have imagination. You don’t really feel it now, but you imagine how it felt.”
“Yes,” replied Mother Wolf, “but that’s something I did feel once. But I was never killed. So how can I imagine how it would feel to be killed?”