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[Said
Mowgli:] "I was born in the jungle; I have obeyed the Law of the
Jungle; and there is no wolf of ours from whose paws I have not pulled
a thorn. Surely they are my brothers!"
"Oh,
thou art a man’s cub," said the Black Panther, very tenderly;
"and even as I returned to my jungle, so thou must go back to men
at last,
– to the men who are thy brothers."
Rudyard
Kipling (1865–1936)
The Jungle Book, Part I
BRASOV (Romania)
— It does seem like a chapter straight out of
Kipling's The
Jungle Book, so hospital staff had every right to give the boy the
nickname of the book's hero "Mowgli."
The
Telegraph reported on Sunday that a real-life Mowgli who lived
in Romanian forests with wild dogs is returning to family life after
having been found by a shepherd, barely alive, naked and huddled in a
cardboard box. The seven-year-old boy had forgotten how to speak after
approximately three years of living in the wilderness.
Doctors say it would have been almost impossible for him to have
survived alone in the region which, in the wintertime, is known to
drop to temperatures below freezing. They believe that he was
looked after by wild dogs in the Transylvanian forests.
After a television broadcast broke the news to the Romanian people
in February, a woman came forward to claim the child. Lina
Caldarar, 20, told authorities that she had fled from her husband's
home three years ago after the man had beat her. She believes that the
boy, Traian Caldarar, ran away soon afterward for the same reason.
"They were showing him while he was in
hospital," says Ms. Caldarar. "My mum couldn't believe
it. She said, 'no, Lina, it's not him. Calm down'.
But I recognized him.
"I went with my mother to the hospital in
Fagaras and there he was. The doctor asked my son, 'Who is this
woman?' He recognized me immediately. He said, 'Lina;
Mum.' They are still some of the only words he knows.
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Seven-year-old Traian Caldarar was appropriately nicknamed
"Mowgli", after the character in The Jungle Book who was
raised by wolves. (Photo: Evenimentul
Zilei)
"I loved my son," says Ms. Caldarar, "but I had a
violent husband who beat me. When I fled, I lost contact with Traian,
although I tried to get him back.
"He [the boy's father] didn't allow me to take my child, even
though I tried to. He said the child belonged to him. Looking
back, I'm sure he was beating Traian, and that's why he ran away."
The boy's father, Traian Ciurar, 24, is being sought by police.
Ms. Caldarar says, "I never stopped thinking about
him, but there was nothing I could do. I hoped he had perhaps been
adopted by another family."
Adopted he was, by a family of wild dogs,
apparently. For the first few days in the presence of humans, he
exhibited canine qualities and would growl if bothered while eating his
food. Now two months later, the "man cub" is slowly
adapting to his human world, living in the remote village of Vistea de Jos
with his mother, her parents and her three brothers and three sisters.
The boy's progress, both mental and physical, has been
encouraging. But there are still a great many things he must
re-learn before he can integrate safely.
"Someone needs to keep an eye on him at all times
because it's easy for him to get hurt," says his mother. He's
"like an untrained puppy."
Ms. Caldarar has already had one heart-stopping moment
since being reunited with her son when he ran in front of a car to chase a
cat.
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