MIHAIL KOGALNICEANU, Romania - The plaintive howls and mournful meows can melt the hardest hearts. Even the most stoic of soldiers and menacing of Marines feel compassion for stray dogs and cats living on the mean - or at least icy - streets of Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base.
In late January, as the winter turned cruel, cold winds blew and snow drifts grew, the site of desperate dogs and forsaken felines struggling against the elements tortured every animal lover who drove past the sorrowful scene.
Base leaders faced two related but distinct challenges - the humane removal of stray animals from their operating area and convincing MK personnel to resist their natural inclination to feed and shelter homeless hounds and freezing felines.
"Stray animals have been a concern ever since they opened the base," said Edward Trevino, the base director of logistics. "It's an issue here because it's an issue in Romania. Strays are a big problem throughout the area."
Trevino - a permanent resident unlike most of the U.S. military and civilian personnel serving at the base - held a bird's eye view of the situation for some five years.
"Since I live in town I see it firsthand," the Los Angeles native and retired Marine Corps master gunnery sergeant said. "People are compassionate, and they feel sorry for the animals. So you'll see them feeding the animals out of windows. It isn't limited to the base - the situation on base is part of a larger problem."
When Americans first arrived in significant numbers in the spring of 2011, they found stray animals squatting in their work and living areas.
"This was an open base when we began operating here," Trevino said. "So when they gave us the keys, there must've been 30 dogs on our side of the base alone. They were concerned about bites, diseases and garbage, so one of the first things they had to do was remove the dogs."
The problem revived and even escalated with the arrival of large numbers of U.S. personnel and commensurate billeting, support and dining infrastructure. Notwithstanding their tough-as-bark reputation, excessively tender-hearted Marines put military personnel in the dog house with base officials.
"We had a big dog population and the Marines started adopting them as camp pets," Trevino said. "You had dog catchers patrolling the base and Marines hiding the dogs in their rooms. Some of the Marines even did the paperwork and brought the dogs home with them when they left."
Compassionate culprits included food handlers as well as Marines. Food service personnel, evidence suggested, sometimes left doggie bags for guests not invited to the banquet.
"They're not allowed to do it," said Col. Claude Lovell, the base and Black Sea Area Support Team commander. "But people have found little bowls of food outside the dining facility. A cat dubbed "HMS Whiskers" by Navy personnel, the Overland Park, Kan., resident added, "was a first-rate mouser - so he earned his keep. He really cut down on the rodent population, so he was kind of accepted. But the dogs really had to go." Lest any employees consider DFAC managers all bark and no bite, they imposed a doggone draconian dictum on animal feeding by cooks and servers. "If they're caught feeding, they're terminated," Trevino said bluntly.
When soldiers and airmen arrived in large numbers in December and January, health and base officials acted promptly to stop the problem dead in its paw tracks, briefing subordinate leaders and personnel on the dangers of stray animals and posting public warnings.
"There's a natural tendency for people to nurture these animals and want to adopt them as pets, especially while we're away from our own Families and our own pets," said Air Force Col. Lisa Kuhar, the Air Force flight surgeon. "And as they get accustomed to finding food and grow comfortable around our living areas, the numbers and the problem will only grow. The message we need to deliver to our service members is that we simply can't treat these animals as pets."
"They need to be collected and turned over to the humane society," the Spokane, Wash., resident said. "Ultimately it's not only the best thing for health and safety but also the most humane thing for the animals. They should be cared for by the professionals and placed in good homes if possible, not encouraged to live like scavengers."
"If there's a food source, they'll find it, and they'll return to it over and over," Lovell said. "That's why we tell them not to feed the dogs and definitely not to adopt the dogs."
Animals hungry as a hound dog by noon don't always wait for a butler to serve dinner.
"They'll drag anything they can out of the trash cans," said Sgt. Michael Currin of the 21st TSC Regional Support Element, a native of Farmington, N.M. "Once, they successfully toppled one of the garbage containers, and a group of the dogs formed around it. It seemed like only the biggest dog was eating, and the smaller dogs were just standing around watching - but they all acted like they were watching everything that passed, like they were protecting their own food."
Other uninvited four-legged guests, moreover, frequently arrive at the scene of puppy chow and feline feasts.
"If you start leaving out food, you'll start attracting rodents," Kuhar said. "You don't want to leave scraps all over the place and create an incentive for pests to congregate."
Sanitation concerns cause some trepidation, but health officers worry most about bites from stray animals. Rabies, a particularly cruel and almost always fatal viral infection afflicting the central nervous system, typically spreads through animal bites. Although statistically uncommon, the disease holds catastrophic consequences.
"Rabies is rare, but it's almost universally fatal if untreated," Kuhar said, noting the tragic case of a 24-year-old Fort Drum soldier who died of rabies in the summer of 2011, almost eight months after sustaining a dog bite while deployed to Afghanistan. "You stand a much better chance of verifying an animal's health information at home since most pets have records - that isn't the case for stray animals. So if you're bitten we need to see you as soon as possible so we can check you out and determine if you'll need preventative treatment."
Rabies poses the most deadly - but not the only significant - threat to humans interacting with stray animals. "We treat cat scratches like bites," Kuhar said. "They have bacteria in their mouths that can cause a very bad infection. Cats tend to lick their paws frequently - so their scratches pose a risk similar to bites in terms of potential for infection."
Since the stray cats and their canine colleagues represent a sporadic and largely seasonal concern and the base features no enduring paw print, MK maintains no elaborate animal control infrastructure. "When it becomes an issue, we can coordinate for dog catchers to come in and collect the animals and turn them over to the humane society," Lovell said. U.S. Army Europe provided funding for a dog-removal contract in the summer of 2013, and base officials largely succeeded in stemming the stream of strays. Local national employees and Romanian military and civil leaders, Lovell added, serve as conduits to MK officials and humane society representatives in the event of an emergency.
If all else fails, personal vigilance offers a last line of defense.
"When I went running along the perimeter I'd see dogs sometimes," Lovell said. "I'd just look the dogs in the eye - and they generally leave you alone if you look them in the eye. Just in case, I'd carry a rock in one hand and dog treats in the other."
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