Romania’s Wild Boy Reclaimed By His Mother
A youngster found living like a wild animal in Romania has been reunited with his mother - but will have to learn to be a little boy again before being allowed to go back to her.
Romanian authorities confirmed yesterday that the seven-year-old, nicknamed Mowgli after the boy raised by wolves in Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, had been identified and his mother had been found.
Lina Caldarar was reunited with her son, who she had named Traian, at the hospital in Brasov in Romania. She said he was lost more than three years ago and she wanted to care for him again.
She said: "I loved my son but I had a violent partner, and he was always beating me. When I lost Traian I was distraught but there was nothing I could do. I hoped he had perhaps been adopted by another family ... but I had no idea he had been living wild."
The boy was being kept under observation in hospital but doctors said they would place him in an orphanage. Police are trying to find the boy’s father and warn charges might be brought.
Traian was only the size of a three-year-old, could not speak and was naked and living in a box. He suffers from severe rickets, has infected injuries and his circulation is poor, possibly because of frostbite.
Doctors say it would have been impossible for him to survive alone and speculate he might have been looked after by some of the many wild dogs in the Transylvanian countryside, central Romania. He was near the body of a dog that he had apparently been eating.
He was found after the car of a shepherd, Manolescu Ioan, broke down. Mr Ioan had to walk from his pastures and at 6am stumbled on the filthy, wild-eyed child living in a cardboard box and covered only with a plastic sheet. Mr Ioan reported his find to police, who later captured the boy.
When the boy was brought in to the small provincial hospital at Fagaras, nurses concluded he might have been living alone in the moors and eating dead animals for years. He walked with the bandy gait of a chimpanzee and tried to sleep under his bed rather than on it.
Dr Mircea Florea said: "He was found in an animal position and his movements are animalistic. The facts show that he was not brought up in a social environment. He becomes very agitated when he does not have food. He is looking for something to eat all the time. He sleeps after he eats. It is his best sleeping pill."
Dr Florea added: "He has started to learn how to behave himself. With proper care he can learn more and he will go to a child institution."
•Story originally published by:
The Scotsman, Edinburgh / Scotland - Feb 22.02
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