Apollo from Criciova

Apollo in Chizatau

In the cement mixer

This is Apollo ... from Criciova pictured in our garden in Chizatau. Apollo is the father of Eva and Edwin. Edwina fell in love with him at first sight. Mihai criticized me when I wrote about the arrival of Eva and Edwin Van Goat. He said it was wrong of me not to mention their paternity even if Apollo is no longer around. Apollo's original name was Gogu and he was supposed to be castrated the day we bought him. It's a procedure that is done so that the male goat smells less before being eaten. Then one has to wait for a number of months before killing him. He was so handsome that we called him "Apollo Gogu". We eventually had to sell him to a farm because one of the neighbors complained she could smell Apollo whenever she existed her home. I had a lengthy discussion with David on how are male goats are different from men. The primary difference is that goats pee on their faces to create a fairly powerful smell, which attracts the female, while most men do not pee on themselves -- since women would not find that attractive. Otherwise, goats have feelings and hang out together just like people. 

Grandma with Edwina and Eva

Since the pandemic whenever we traveled we took the goats with us -- because you were allowed to travel for agricultural purposes. David did not like it because he said the smell bothered him and because he thought they ruined his image -- David cares how he looks now, always combs his hair before exiting the house and even puts water on it to make it stick to one side (It's all about how he looks to the outside world, though, since he does not clean his room and throws his clothes on the floor and steps on them when inside and uses my room when talking with colleagues on Zoom because it's slightly less dirty; but he is rude to mom and grandma when asked to clean his stuff and so they leave him alone as part of being a teenager). Anyhow, we had to go without him a lot of the times.

Now, that Romania switched from "Starea de Urgenta" (Emergency State) to "Starea de Alerta" (Alert State), grandma is able to exit the house -- not just within a particular time frame, but any time. So, she and David were able to travel to Timisoara to help maintain property there. They did not take the goats with them, but brought the grass cut from the front of the house.

In this pandemic, it consoled me to know that we were traveling with the wife and children of Apollo  even if he is somewhere else now. Mom saw this as a joke. He is the handsomest animal we have seen to date -- he had that wild look about him that was so special while being patient and reasonably well behaved. The resemblance is not obvious when one looks at Eva and Edwin. They have blueish grey fur with a bit of brown and look almost like a cloud. When they were born on Easter Sunday I thought they looked like little Angels, which I suppose are close enough to Gods.

The police never stopped us during the emergency state when we had the goats with us. It must have been partly because one was allowed to travel for agricultural purposes, and partly because goats are still a sign of poverty as are children. So, with me and James and the goats well visible in the car, nobody wanted to ask mom any questions. It would not have been so if we had been in England or Spain, where children are demonized as vectors of the pandemic and animals can be a sign of opulence, but here people retained some tolerance -- mostly in smaller cities. We've heard that in Timisoara and Bucharest the police gave tons of fines, while in Lugoj they would mostly just ask people to fill out the form if they were found without it.