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Moscow's Community Of Adventuring Stray Dogs
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What with one thing and another, Russians tend to be our go-to example when it comes to people who are physically incapable of giving even the tiniest of nano-fucks. Following that stereotype logic, it's easy to assume that Moscow, the country's capital, is Hardcore City, where vodka'd up folks in fur hats stumble through insane traffic and wrestle grizzly bears in a state of constant anarchy that is recorded for YouTube by a thousand cheap dash-cams.
Which makes it all the more surprising that there's a live-action Disney movie hiding within the city. We've already told you about Moscow's stray dogs that are so clever they can actually use the city's Metro system, riding downtown for a workday of beggin' and stealin' food, and returning to the relative peace of outer districts for the night. It's just the tip of the iceberg, too: The city has a solid, comfortable population of stray dogs that have learned to survive in the city environment in a way that makes the intelligent dogs from Up seem like underachievers. They dodge Moscow's notoriously messed-up traffic by crossing the street with the pedestrians. They use cartoon-like food acquiring tactics, such as sending the smallest and cutest member of the pack to woo susceptible humans or "accidentally" barking behind people who seem to be holding their hot dogs a little too clumsily. Of course, that's if they need to actively seek sustenance at all; the locals fully tolerate and even love the strays, to the point where many of them don't even need to forage for food -- they just lounge near busy subway routes and catch whatever bits of lunch commuters toss them, unless of course it's Vasili with his fucking tuna sandwiches again.
The Moscow Times
Even though they keep hogging the best seats.