Angelina and Brad we are not

Cretan dogs choose you: how very Chuck Norris

There are a couple things on this island that Cretans will probably never run out of… ever.  To name just a few: olive oil, orange juice, lamb, raki, tavernas, goat shit (seriously it is everywhere), bad drivers, beautiful views, terrible roads, honey, and stray cats and dogs. I’d like to focus on that last one for now because I’ve now got some personal experience. Personal experience in the form of a stray dog we now know as Bob Wiley.

But before we jump into “What About Bob?” I’d first like to shed some light on a very important topic (in an after-school special style, if you will):

There is a very large stray cat/dog problem here and it will most likely stay this way because there is no such thing as a pound/SPCA, nor any organization to help and for some unknown reason they will not take the time to “fix” any of the animals (Bob Barker would be in PSA heaven here). The Cretan idea of animal population control equals a €5 box of poison and some raw meat. Sad, but true.  This is also one reason most of the strays are scared of people. This is really the only thing I do not like about living in Greece. There are as many cats as there are fleas and I have seen dogs with and without homes that I would love to save.

Although their practices are savage there are a few people that try to help as best they can…and so we found out for ourselves back in late March.

And here we go…

This one day back in late March Kip asks if I saw the puppies at the end of our road (So stupid. Do you even know me? I don’t notice anything) and I said no.  But all I had to hear was the word “puppies” and off I go in search of them. I was successful and brought the two, cute little bag o’ bones back to the house.  Not wanting to get too attached, I simply referred to them as “the twins”. I decided to keep them with the intention of taking them to the local vet and dropping them off-- like the vet is some sort of safe haven. Had I known what the future held for me, I would have just put them in a basket covered with a blanket on the vet’s doorstep, knocked on the door and ran like hell.  Instead, I took the twins to the vet and told them that I’d found these orphans alone and blah, blah, blah.  The vet people looked at me with a confused look and basically told me that they were now my dogs/my responsibility.  Huh?  No.  I just found them and I was trying to be nice and humane.  Apparently, the “finders keepers” policy is alive and well when it comes to stray animals in Greece. So needless to say I was stuck with two, (2) month-old girl puppies and a phone number of someone who may be able to help (read: no help at all).

Now fast forward a few weeks, Kip and I were heading home from a lovely day at the beach when we see a man and dog walking near the entrance to our road. We pass by them and go up the house. We pull into the driveway, get out, and, like a magic trick, the damned dog from the road was right next to us!!

Enter: Bob Wiley.

He had a look that clearly said, “I am sooo glad I found you guys and I am so gonna stay here forever and ever and ever.  Oh, and by the way… what’s for dinner?”  

WTF?!! Oh Heyll No!! No way is another dog going to stay here.  This ain’t no rest home.   So I led him down the road to where we first saw him using some food as bait and I turned to walk back home.

He actually beat me back to the house.

We sprayed him with the hose; chased him with a broom. We did everything but kick him and he kept coming back -- wagging tail and all. He pretty much told us he was setting up shop with us. So within a matter of weeks, we went from having 1 dog, to an unruly and mix-matched brood of 4.  

Shortly after Bob showed up at our house, he managed to go next door and chew a designer flip flop that ended up costing us 200€. That’s all I will say about this, because quite frankly it was a bunch of bullshit and I am still bitter. After this we’d had enough and decided we would play the Greeks’ game and just go drop him off in a town a few miles away (about a 10 minute drive in the car). At last our pack was dwindling and we were back to 3 dogs. We were at 3 dogs for a total of 24 hours.

Bob showed up the next night!

Seriously!! These Greek dogs are smart and tenacious. I am pretty sure if that was Gibbs, we would have never seen him again; he probably would have suffered a heart attack after the first hour on his own and if a heart attack wouldn’t have taken him surely starvation would have (my boy likes to eat).  I told Kip that Bob deserved a day of rest and a nice meal. So two days later we load him back into the car and drive him further into the town, driving up and down some streets to try and disorient him (much like spinning a blindfolded child before trying to pin the tail on a donkey).  We wished him luck with his life and let him loose.

He was back before Kip left for work in the morning (is this some sort of new therapy?!).

I thought to myself, “OK, Bob. You win this round.” Though he seemed a bit smug about his boomerang-like abilities, so I was not as impressed.  A little humility goes a long way.  We fed him and picked another town in the opposite direction that was even further away from our home and drove him there that night. The date:  May 10, 2012.  Again, we wished him well and sent him on his way.

And all was quiet.

After too many complaints and my broken heart, a week later I had to let the twins go as well. Luckily, they were young and hadn’t developed their Greek GPS abilities yet, but I hoped they were old enough to fend for themselves and I still hope that they stick together and watch each other’s backs on the tough and hungry streets of Crete (or have found another forever home).  Finally, back to just one dog.  Gibbs seemed confused about all the comings and goings of these intruders, and while we we think he ultimately enjoyed having some playmates, we’re sure he’s glad to have our full attention (food) again.

So now here we are on June 2, 2012. It’s a beautiful Saturday afternoon here and Kip and I have been lounging by the pool overlooking the beautiful bay and rocky mountains and hillsides that surround our home. We’ve just finished our lunch and we head back outside to resume our poolside lounging. Kip calls me over to the side of the house to see something, and sure as shit there he is… BOB WILEY!!!! He’s laying by the front door like he never effing left, and when the hell did he even sneak up here? We were only inside long enough to eat a turkey sandwich!! Thoughts about Bob’s journey flood my head and I start cracking up. All Kip can do is shake his head and say “Can you believe this shit?” over and over again. Then the real fun begins. We can only think of poor Bob Wiley, a canine version of Bill Murray’s character in the quintessential comedy, “What About Bob?” walking the streets of Crete with his mantra:

“I feel good, I feel great, I feel wonderful. I feel good, I feel great, I feel wonderful.” All the while shouting, “DR. LEO MARVIN. Has anyone seen DR.LEO MARVIN??” to all the other dogs. Probably around day 8 he started taking baby steps. “Baby steps over the rock. Baby steps down the hill. Baby steps up the hill. Baby steps until nighttime. Baby steps wake up. Baby steps over the rock.”

We could go through the whole “What about Bob?” movie, replacing Bill Murray with this mutt from Crete and Dr. Leo Marvin with Kip and me. So that’s what we did.  We reenacted the entire movie poolside all afternoon… and yes it was awesome …and yes I’m still cracking up about it!

I can honestly only imagine what poor Bob went through to get back to us. As far as I’m concerned, he has certainly earned the right to stay with us a little longer (I’m guessing he’s realizing this as well). Hell, after the flip flop incident we have basically paid for him already.

Depending on how things go, I may just have to play a bunch of Neil Diamond songs and then maybe he will decide to divorce us (“So, what you're saying is that even though you are an almost-paralyzed, multiphobic personality who is in a constant state of panic, your wife did not leave you, you left her because she... liked Neil Diamond?”)… because at this point it seems he is only going to leave on his terms.

UPDATE:  June 7, 2012.  Bob has gone missing for the last two days.  However, before he left, he brought his girlfriend to our place.  I feel like we’re being duped.  Bob’s babystepping it back to town and telling all the other flea bags what suckers us Americans living on top of the hill are.  If he comes back in a few days with yet another dog, I’m going to be convinced that we’ve been set up!!  Stay tuned.

                                                            Mr. Bob Wiley

It's all olives to me

My Day as an Olive Picker:

The other morning, Kip and I ran into our landlady, Lydia, and she told us that her husband and a few friends were “picking” her olive trees the next day to make olive oil. Since I have been here in Crete, I have seen countless olive trees and workers, and I have been a bit fascinated with the whole thing. Me being an olive hater, but an olive oil lover, I wanted to be part of it, so I volunteered myself to help with the “picking”.

Lydia said that would be great and thanked me. I called my new friend Susie to set it up that she and her husband, John, would pick me up the next day for the “picking” (you sure she said 8:45?...am?  As in, in the morning??? Oops, didn’t realize we would start so early!).

The next morning, I was up and dressed in what I believed was the perfect olive “picking” outfit. I had on a few layers, jeans, a hat and my rain boots.  I was very much looking the part of a professional picker and so excited about the day! Susie picked me up, we swung back to get John and we were on our way!

As our day began with coffee and tea-- coffee for the American (me!), German, and Dutch, and tea for the three Brits and the Ethiopian (how very U.N. of us), we were given an overview of olive “picking” and what to expect for the rest of the day -- By the way no one could ask for a better group of people to spend the day with!  We certainly made an awesome olive “picking” posse!

SIDEBAR: After the overview, I realized this whole process was not a very complicated one and I was very gung-ho at that point.  It wasn’t gonna be like picking cotton in the south, or rooting around the french countryside like pigs for truffles...I was going to kick some ass and take some olives’ names. BRING IT ON!

We started by pulling out these huge tarps that were used to catch the olives after we “picked” them and spread them out under the trees so we don’t lose any of the little buggers. With that first tug of the tarp, a trickle of perspiration and the first layer of my perfect “picking” outfit came off (we’d just begun, holy crap what did I get myself into?).

As you may have noticed I used quotations for the word “pick”.   I did that because you really don’t “pick” olives as much as you, well, how do I put this delicately?  Well, you just bash the ever loving shit out of the tree until they plummet to the earth. Like I said... not too complicated.

Our very advanced tools for this process consisted of plastic pitchfork looking things that have a life span (in my case) of 1.5 olive trees, a generator powered spin-y thing that REALLY shakes the tree to “encourage” the olives to jump from their leafy perches, tarps to catch the olives, and a sorting table and a bunch of big brown burlap sacks.

After about a half-hour or so, my gung-ho-ness wore off a little bit (I mean, don’t we just hire people to do this kind of thing?!?!) and I tried a variety of methods of hitting the tree, while at the same time using my cat-like reflexes to dodged the spin-y thing that made the olives come flying out of the tree at Mach 10 to pelt you.

My swings:  I tried a baseball swing, over-handed, under-handed, left-handed, and even a golf swing which made me realize if I’d had my driver with me it would have been pretty damn cool.

Then it was time to move the tarp to the next tree (yeah...that was just the first tree). Not complicated still, but holy hell it was heavy, there are a bunch of olives up on those trees.  Who knew?!?!  So as I walked with the very surprisingly heavy olive tarp to place it under the next tree... WHAM!!!!!!!  I hit my head on a branch and I am pretty sure I heard my neck break-it made a very scary cracking noise. As a result, my hat went spinning around but managed to hang on by my little pony tail, just dangling there. So while I stood there stunned waiting for the stars and tweety birds to disappear their circular parade around my head, I fought back my tears, I righted my hat, checked for blood (none--BONUS), sucked it up, kicked the god damn tarp and went back to whacking.  After that the novelty of all this olive bullshit was gone and it just felt like work.  Correction:  MANUAL LABOR. I thought asking to go home at that point would have been a bit gauche, seeing as how I was the youngest in the crowd. 

 It was pretty quiet most of the morning and we were all in our own little worlds just listening to the hum of the generator. As time went by, I amused myself with singing in my head and changing choice words of songs and movie quotes to something to do with olives. I wish I could remember what I sang to myself because I feel it was pretty damn funny, but the blow to the head might have limited my memory. We whacked some more and eventually we collected enough olives on one tarp, so it was time to put the little green bastards on the sorting table.

The sorting table was just that (nothing very Harry Potter-ish about it.  It didn’t talk and shout out GRYFFINDOR or anything like that), it just separated the olives from the big branches and most of leaves and set them loose to roll down the tilted expanse and finally ended up in the burlap sack.  At this point I start cracking up and all I can think of is Dr. Evil in Austin Powers during the group therapy scene, ”I had a normal childhood. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. If I was insolent, I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds.”  I guess these olives were insolent! This table will forever be my favorite part of the whole olive tree whacking process.  Why you ask? All that is needed for this is to move the olives around until they fall thru the holes in the sorter into the burlap sacks. Aside from a few pricks from stray branches, it was right up my my alley; and BONUS my hands had never been so soft and smooth.  I stood around that table like a buzzard watching road kill, whenever there were olives to sort, I was there. It was like, “Hey everyone!  Look at me!  Working soooo hard over here with the sorter.  Sorting olives.  Making the magic happen!”

More time passed and next thing I knew, Susie, my personal savior, announces the words that had been lingering on my lips for the past hour, “Is it beer:30 yet?” She was right , it was lunch and beer time. BTW, at some point she took over the spin-y thing, kicked ass with it, and did it the rest of the day- girl power!  As we enjoyed our break, we had a nice discussion about the cold rocky mountains and I made a couple of hilarious comments about the pitiful, tired little fire they tried to start from wet olive branches. I was told I was being “cheeky” - which I thought was the coolest thing ever!!! Me? Cheeky??? I never heard anyone say that word outside of a movie, a joke, or trying to be funny using a fake accent (“are you a cheeky bum looker??).  I beamed with pride that it was directed at me.

Fun and games over-- back to work. We power whacked (Susie), moved tarps (Lydia and Ruby), cut and collected branches (John), truly picked olives (Pete), sorted and bagged (me) and fire started (Dale) for 3 or so more hours until we were “finished”. We collected all the tarps, broken tools and left over branches for the fire.

 As we sat around the fire and had a few more beers, with the sun setting behind us, we talked about what a perfect day it had been for picking (it was a gorgeous day nestled in an otherwise crappy week). We looked over ourselves-- all filthy and sweaty with some olive picking battle scars (hurt neck/bruised head (me), hurt knee (poor Lydia), back aches and some scratches (everyone)), all the while feeling very proud of our olive prowess!

Our pride lasted just a few minutes when Lydia told us one man had done every tree in the orchard in one day...OUCH!  Full Disclosure: I think we finished less than 20 trees all day and there are about 50 total.

 So. Complicated?  No.  Dangerous?  You betcha! I don’t believe professional olive picking will be an option for any of us in the future, but I have a newfound appreciation for my olive oil and would like to remind all of you martini drinkers to raise a glass to celebrate the often underappreciated bad-ass olive pickers of this world! Yamas!