In an unexpected twist, earlier today Child Protective Services (CPS) returned an adolescent boy to the wolf family that raised him. The move reverses more than a year of insistence by the agency that the den where the boy had lived was an unfit environment for human children.
“While we still hold reservations about the suitability of a wolf den for a teenage boy, we realized that the wolf family could provide better emotional support and developmental growth pathways than any of the residential options we might be able to offer him,” said CPS Director Janet Wrestchild in a statement to the press.
“We try to keep families together whenever we can,” Wrestchild said in her statement. “Without a positive identification of a biological family, we are resigned to returning the boy to his adoptive family.” Unstated was the overrun and understaffed condition of the agency’s current facilities, causing many to speculate that CPS is just trying to move as many children out from under its care as possible.
CPS has been under scrutiny recently due to a series of crises that have left the agency spending more time defending itself to the public than looking after the children it is charged with protecting. Wrestchild denied that public pressure had any bearing on her decision to return the child, whose name has been withheld for privacy reasons, to his adoptive canid family.
In January, the agency’s annual report revealed an alarming increase in children under its care who have disappeared into alternate dimensions by various means. The report tried to minimize the disquieting trend by pointing out that, historically, nearly 79% of these children return. However, the report failed to address the fact that many returnees are permanently affected by trauma experienced during their interdimensional travels.
A couple months later, CPS again found itself at the center of controversy when a whistleblower leaked a plan to swap brainwashed lookalike children under its charge with the progeny of high-profile world leaders. Targets included the offspring of monarchs, prime ministers, presidents, legislative leaders, and C-suite executives of multinational corporations among others. Paupergate, as it has come to be called, led to a rash of resignations and terminations for the agency, which is still struggling to find replacements for many of the positions vacated by the scandal.
The case of the boy raised by wolves broke about eighteen months ago when late one evening a truck driver spotted the boy crossing Route 13 on all fours. The driver called the strange site into the police, who initiated a days-long search that ended when the boy was found curled under a rock outcropping, asleep.
In Wrestchild’s statement, she says that the boys’ case handlers spent months trying to identify his birth family. According to CPS, the boy himself was unable to provide any useful information about his human parents, even after he began to communicate in ways other than grunts, growls, and attempts to bite anyone who approached him. No missing persons reports in the last two decades match any description of the boy, whose age is estimated to be around thirteen.
We reached out to the wolf pack for comment, but only received a snarling growl in return.