Rome is famous for its stray cats, New York for its rats. But in Bucharest, the streets have gone to the dogs.
Between 100,000 and 200,000 mangy mutts roam the city, cowering in doorways, dashing in front of cars, foraging for food. They bite 50 people a day - nearly twice as many as in New York, a city three times larger."I was climbing the stairs to the Senate and a dog just jumped up and bit my leg," Irinel Radulescu said. She went for tetanus and rabies shots "and in the hospital courtyard, a dog almost bit me again."
Even Hillary Rodham Clinton's security guards had to deal with the mongrels, chasing a pack away from another hospital just before she arrived for a visit last year.
The problem of out-of-control canines is blamed on former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who leveled entire neighborhoods during his megalomaniacal building spree in the 1980s.
Ornate prewar homes were torn down to make way for a gargantuan Palace of the Republic - second in floor space among government buildings only to the Pentagon - and rows of equally pompous buildings along a boulevard patterned after the Champs-Elysees in Paris.
The people who lost their homes were moved into large apartment blocks with no yards. Some found new homes for their dogs, but others just left them to fend for themselves. And the abandoned animals have been breeding ever since.
The dogs saunter along the sidewalks with a confident air, sniffing around for scraps and rooting through garbage cans at night. Human passers-by try to avoid them, but sometimes the dogs snap.
The bites are usually more painful than dangerous.
Bucharest has not had a case of rabies since the 1970s, but most people still get the shots as a precaution, says Dr. Mariana Mardarescu of Colentina Hospital.
"It's not the poor animal's fault," she says. "They're protecting their territory and are hungry and thirsty."
But not everyone is so forgiving.
More than 1,000 complaints a month pour into the city's Animal Protection office. But the cash-strapped city has only eight dog catchers, two trucks and one pound with space for 300 animals.