A Kutya Fajat!

“A Kutya Fajat!” That’s Hungarian slang which roughly translates “bummer!” Literally, however, it translates “the dog’s tree,” which clearly offers more colorful imagery for that sentiment – a sentiment we recently experienced when a local stray dog decided to call us his own.
We call him “Extra,” and he is ugly. Of course, so is our other dog, which we got at five weeks old by choice – at that time she was cute. Puppies are truly false advertising, but that is a different story.
With Blackie, we may have been deceived, but with Extra, we knew he was ugly from the outset. He was the thorn in the side of the entire neighborhood. Everyone (including us) threw rocks at him to get him out of their yard and garden. He killed a neighbor’s pigeon and generally made the kid of trouble a stray dog makes when he is trying to survive in the cruel world. One day, he simple decided we were his family – even though we continually chased him out of the yard. He would greet us when we arrived home. If I walked to the village center he would be right at my side.
“You are NOT my dog!” Russ would yell at him and spray him with some water as he watered the lawn. Extra just happily played in the water’s spray and wagged his oldly formed tail.
One day during English camp I came home to find that someone had tried to steal a giant flower pot from our front porch. As they tried to climb through the fence, something had made them drop it and it broke in half. I could not help but wonder if Extra had something to do with foiling the theft.
The next night the car alarm went off, but just before it did, Extra who had perched himself on our front doorstep broke out in a barking frenzy. And that was when Extra became our “extra” dog. We did not need or want another dog, so he is the extra dog, rightfully named “Extra.”
But an extra dog is not the only thing we can say, “A kutya fajat!” about. The Degus I wrote of in a previous blog – the gift that keeps on giving – has done just that. Three baby Degus were spotted in the cage last week. Lately, we have only seen one up and running around, but whatever has happenedto them, we now have more Degu than we started with. And we started with more Degu than we ever wanted.