Bums of Athens

Dogs are the bums of Athens. There are no homeless people as my friend on the bus the other day pointed out. But there are plenty of homeless dogs. In fact, there is one sleeping dog in front of every store front. They don't beg, like bums do, but they dig through the trash looking for food and occasionally stand in the middle of a crowd and bark until someone gives them some food. They run through restaurants and weave through traffic. They're not all as skinny as you might think as they are smart enough to hang around food establishments and tourist suckers such as myself give them my leftover dinners. Hercules told me there is a big dog problem mainly because "we don't take their balls off." Speaking from experience, I think this is a problem that affects more than dogs, but I'll save that for another time. But, he says brightly, we don't kill them either. Which I guess to their way of thinking is a great trade-off. You keep your balls, we'll let you live off the land as long as you want and we won't kill you. My brother said he hopes I'm not planning on bringing any of these dogs home and my answer was, No Way! Not unless I find a real cute one that doesn't have mange.