Bulgarian Wild Animal Food

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Bulgarian Dog Food or was it a brown bear.

Unwittingly I fed a dog last night. Maybe it was a pack of dogs or jackals. - or wolves or bears.

We have discovered that dogs are a particular facet of Bulgarian life. Or more correctly, all night canine barking is a dominating in your ear hole feature of the nocturnal Bulgarian shindig. They seem to get wound up about 2 or 3 am and bark bark bark until dawn. In the still of night the sound carries. So one dog will wake all the others in the neighbourhood. Now its not unusual for a dog to bark at someone walking past its particular patch of turf. But he barking normally subsides when the visitor has passed by. Bulgarian dogs are different. Bulgarian dogs seem to be on a regular diet of Berger paint – Their barking just keeps on keeping on. Each dog maintains the same pitch and tone for hours on end, or should I say – without end.

Its a great relief at dawn to hear the Balkan roosters crow their cock-a-doodle-do. It means the dogs will shut up.

At night I normally roll in the awning an put the table and chairs etc away. And I leave a small mat and my rubber thongs out beside the door in case i have to step out during the night.

Well last night that’s what I did.

But in he morning my rubber thongs and the mat had disappeared.

I looked around for a bit.

Pat found my right thong – only 30 meters from the van.

It appears the dogs got hungry during a night of hard barking and decided to get some take aways to snack on.

It was some time before I found the leftie. Obviously more tasty.

But we never found the mat. It may have been more appetising.

Or maybe it was a jackal – Jackals are territorial predators that live in packs of 10 to 30 individuals - Bulgaria has the largest European Jackal population.

Or maybe a wolf or a brown bear. Bulgarian is home to healthy populations of wolves and brown bears.

After all one of their top selling wines is labelled as BEARS BLOOD.

Perhaps that wine has a slightly rubbery taste.

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