Sheri Halvorsen, age 8, of Superior, Wisconsin, for her question:

Are any wolverines left in the United States?

Yes, we still have wolverines in perhaps 20 different states. The shaggy fellas are still as tough as they always were, still fierce and very greedy. But nowadays they try harder to keep out of sight. Nobody loves them very much because they steal people's food and hurt other animals. This is why so many of them have been hunted down and destroyed. But wolverines are very smart animals smart enough to find lonely places to hide away from human hunters.

Many of our remaining wolverines live up in Alaska. Others live in Montana and Nebraska, also in North and South Dakota. There are a few in the woods of Illinois and Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania and New York. Once in a while you may meet a wolverine in the Western mountains. They are still there in California and Utah, in Colorado and New Mexico. True, the wolverines are unfriendly and very unpopular. But there is room for a few such characters in the world and let's hope that at least some of them survive.