A Word about the Animals

Animals

Blog entry September 5, 2005

Much of Romania is blighted by wild dogs. These are strays and former strays and sons and daughters of strays. Most families have a non-stray that they use as watchdog, our Gazda family’s is named Bill Clinton. The watch dogs can be mean, the strays usually are not. In Rasnov and in Brasov the stray dogs would slink around corners and hide behind trees. Most were not aggressive but timid and fearful. All were thin. Many looked young. Some were even cute.

Many cities are overcome with these dogs. It is a real problem. In Luna de Sus however, we’ve seen only one stray dog in the month we’ve been here. We have seen lots of kittens. Perhaps it is the Hungarian influence. Stray kittens do have the advantage of keeping the mice at bay.

Last Friday I was invited to attend a targ. A targ is the market exchange for livestock. It’s also a flea market. For those of you that have been to the Elkton field days, imagine that combined with the county fair. Half of the carutsas in the county were there, and every kind of domesticated animal was available for sale. The folks I went with were in the market for a calf to raise for veal.

There were piglets in the trunks of cars and in crates. There were big hogs, too, if that was your pleasure. There were sheep and goats and puppies. There was a section of grain dealers. There were lots of horses, many weanlings, however, I didn’t get to walk over in that direction because my hosts had found the calf they liked and were ready to leave.

Yesterday, Saturday, Nancy and I hitchhiked down the back way to Turda. Turda is a medium size city formerly known for its salt mine. It was a pleasant place with a wide piati and several nice churches but we went to see the first annual Turda Fest. The Turda fest was put together with volunteer help. A few of those volunteers were Peace Corps folks. It was an agricultural based theme and I wanted to see if there were any contacts I could make there.

We had a good time, tasted some wine, bought a box of wine home in a punga, and saw a part of the country that we hadn’t seen before. We ate pig off the spit. And we registered to win a steer. Not sure what we would have done if we would have won it, but we got a good laugh. We even named it for our country director, Jim Eckstrom.

Today I strolled up the hillsides flanking town. I’ll try and enclose a picture. On the way back down, I was offered a ride in a carutsa and in faltering Romanian I tried to explain to my new friend about my horse running in a race later today in Virginia. It really is West Virginia, but that would have been way to hard to explain. Good Luck to Lucky Nell. If she does well, I’ll post that later in the week.