Update on the Dire Wolf Emotional Support Pet Program at St. Luke’s Hospital

“For more than a decade, scientists have chased the idea of reviving extinct species, a process sometimes called de-extinction. Now, a company called Colossal Biosciences appears to have done it, or something close, with the dire wolf, a giant, extinct species made famous by the television series ‘Game of Thrones.’” ~The New York Times, April 2025

Dear Community Members,

We hope this letter finds you well (our injured community members notwithstanding, but we assure you we are taking good care of everyone here at St. Luke’s!).

As most of you know, given the news coverage and the massive, massive amount of violence, there have been some complications with the recent installation of emotional support dire wolves at St. Luke’s.

Also, and this is no reason for alarm, but if you see anything running around that looks like it could be a dire wolf, please call the general info line at St. Luke’s.

The emotional support wolf program was premised upon the best of intentions: like most of America, our staff and administration were captivated by that adorable video of the howling baby wolves being held by one of the scientists that edited their ancestors’ genes, inserted those genes into the womb of a hound-dog surrogate, and brought back to life a dangerous predator that’s been extinct for over 13,000 years. We very badly wanted to be the first medical facility to combine this level of cutting edge biotechnology with emotional support.

Plus, America has brought back some not-so-great things in the past year: measles, back-alley abortions, fascism. Bringing back dire wolves seemed so hopeful compared to those things; we thought embracing them would be an exciting way of looking toward the future.

What we did not count on was how extremely bloodthirsty and chaotic these dire wolves would turn out to be.

We are understandably receiving some pretty serious critique in the media right now, and we want to use this opportunity to reassure the community that we did NOT introduce the dire wolves at our Children’s Hospital yet, thank goodness.

At least not intentionally. It may be possible that just one dire wolf has made its way toward the children’s ward, so once again we are asking everyone to remain on the lookout. We’ve also just been notified that the general info line is no longer working because one of the wolves was drawn to the operator’s station by the scent of leftover carnitas and then some things happened, so please just call 911.

It’s not that we failed to anticipate potential barriers to the success of this program. We knew that dire wolves are big and terrifying, and we considered that some patients might have allergies to them. We had mitigation plans in place to account for both of these possibilities.

What we did not account for is the fact that the dire wolves would be carriers of a zoonotic disease so ancient, viral, and destructive that modern medicine is wholly unable to respond to it; clearly, a hospital full of immunocompromised patients, gaping wounds, and elderly folk is not a great place to have this pathogen released.

Behaviorally, we knew that wolves might be a bit skittish or unpredictable, but we did not know that they would tear through the ICU chewing through IV’s, snarling at nurses, and intermittently attacking one another. We also had no idea they had either developed or inherited a taste for human blood. There was just no way to know any of these things.

One positive outcome of the program is that before anyone got hurt, our hospital marketing department was able to capture some striking photos of the dire wolves during their initial entrance to the hospital. Imagine the scene: a gleaming-white, sterile environment at the forefront of technology and patient care welcoming a team of gigantic, gleaming-white dire wolves, themselves a triumph of biological science. You can see the appeal.

That wing of the hospital is now closed for clean-up and reconstruction, but we did get the photographs before anything went wrong. We’d also like to request that you stop sharing those pics on social media, at least for now.

In conclusion, we want to reiterate that we have learned a lot from this experience, that we are working hard to restore order, electricity, and running water to St. Luke’s, and that as of right now it appears 911 is down. This is not solely due to the escaped dire wolves; it’s at least partly due to the increasing number of people infected with the rapidly-mutating wolf virus. Please stay tuned for further instructions about how to protect yourself from that.

Right now we just really need to catch these dire wolves.