Well, the warmth and lovely weather has come to a temporary end. A cold front is expected later today with snow through Saturday. But the temps will rise slightly above freezing each day, so mostly it will just be wet and pretty while it falls. Interestingly, as back at home when I would look for red bud trees and forsythia as a sign of spring, here they have the crocuses. And while walking through the park yesterday, I noticed several crocuses peaking their little purple heads up out of the ground. If it snows while they are blooming and sticks only to that ground, it will be a truly lovely sight.
There once were three little pigs - and a big, bad wolf. And this wolf had a thing for blowing down houses. But this wolf got around. He also preferred little girls with red riding hoods, Grannys, opportunities for lying little boys who wanted attention, and a rather odd fetish for dressing in sheep's clothing. More recently, he has even made it over to Bugs Bunny's neck of the woods doing an hourly job with a sheep dog, and it also seems, he made it to a certain swamp inhabited by a large, green ogre with a Scottish accent.
You must be, of course, asking yourself by this point, "Where is she going with this?" My first exposure to the the big, bad wolf was through the three little pigs. I can remember that story being read to me, and for our oldest son, it was his favorite as a child. And like most children, the encounters through children's stories and movies become more numerous with each passing year. We are taught early on to fear and hate the wolf. I mean, he is, they say, the biggest and baddest of them all. But here in Germany, where the stories of the Grimm brothers really have roots, it is a bit more than just the fun and games of fairy tales. People truly did loath the creature. It devastated cattle and sheep, and from time to time, it also caught an unfortunate person who happened to come too near. Most people's encounters, though, were with wolves that had contracted rabies, of course making the recounting of any survivor that much more terrifying. For these reasons, hunters concentrated on eliminating this creature from their villages and pastures. As of 200 years ago, there were no wolves left in all of Germany and most of Poland. The wolves that survived, retreated to the vast lands of Russia.
There is a German newspaper that is online called The Local (http://www.thelocal.de). I love this paper because it is all in English, so I can sorta have a sense that I know what is going on in this country. Evening news is national, not local, and only lasts 15 minutes total, and that includes sports and weather, so needless to say, to find out about current events, regardless of language issues, can be a challenge. In a recent issue of The Local, there was a news article about wolves making it back to Germany. They have migrated back through Poland to the far eastern sections of Brandenburg and Saxony, inhabiting either current or no longer used military proving grounds. The bombs keep hunters away, giving the animals a chance to find some footing again. Currently, there are only 5 packs and two lone wolves that wander the regions for a total of 40 or so animals. But the legends of old are hard to combat. A two scientist team, privately funded, spend all of their energies tracking the wolves to determine health and numbers as well as trying to educate the government and general populous about these creatures. Currently, it is illegal to shoot a wolf within Germany as well as all of Europe. However, recently, two wolves were known to have been shot, and the men involved with one of the shootings are now facing stiff fines and emblazoned in court proceedings.
Fortunately, farmers in the region are more tolerant, knowing that any animals that are destroyed by wolves will be completely compensated for by the government, but hunters and citizens in the region are not so thrilled about the return. Hunters are concerned that wolves will decimate their hunting targets, such as deer. Citizens are simply sure that someday soon, a person will be eaten by the wolves, even though this is highly unlikely. This notion is propagated by the local tabloids who have run sensational articles in the likes of Grimm claiming that the wolves will eat the local children. As the fear spreads, more and more people are calling to complain of the wolves being in the locals' yards and gardens. Of all the cases called in, only 5% have actually been wolf sitings, the others were loose dogs. In total, since 1945, only nine people in the entirety of Europe have been attacked and killed by the animals, and five of those animals were found to have been rabid.
Given the likes of stories from Grimms Fairy Tales, such as Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs, as well as popular fables of Aesop, such as The Boy Who Cried Wolf and The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, these mysterious and beautiful creatures have much more than survival to overcome.
The word for the day is wolf (this is a toughy): der Wolf - spelled the same and pronounced with a "v" instead of "w" for the beginning letter, but otherwise the same. But the plural is die Wölfe - verlf eh (kinda like the sound that the or makes in world).
The question for the day is more rather a statement than a question, but of course it leads to tomorrow's topic: "Just take two aspirin and call me in the morning."
Bis Morgen, (until tomorrow)
Frau Spitzer
