Werewolves - Joanópolis

Emporio Cachoeira: where we fill up on cheese and munchies before braving the werewolves...

This is a photo out the window in the middle of Joanópolis, the "cidade-sede" or headquarters of our rented country house. It's a pretty city and bears exploring more when I'm not piled into the car with kids, dogs and food for a week. This never happens.

Joanópolis is known for two things. Well, okay, I know it for two things, most people for one. The first one, of minor fame, is that it is absolutely chock-o-block with Fuscas. You know, the old VW beetles. There are some from the 1950s all the way up to the more recent maybe 1980s versions. I've never seen the New Beetle but it could be around. There are so many Fuscas that I call it Fuscópolis. I think I wrote a blog on it somewhere. Ah, here it is.

The second thing is for real fame. It is the worldwide capital of Lobisomen, or Werewolves. Yes, this cute little town of 12,000 has the most number of reports of werewolf sightings in the world. Not including the stuffy ones outside every store (you can take your picture with the two in the photo above).

Now, I have no fear of werewolves. There are other scarier things in this country (motoboys, the stupid bugs that chewed me up this weekend, etc). But I did some reading about them this morning and I might have to go take my kids to be baptized after all. Apparently they chomp non-baptized kids! Or maybe they just have to wear silver all the time. Hard to know.

The other thing I learned this morning is that normally the seventh child after six born of the same sex is the one that turns into a werewolf. Now this explains why our housekeeper's mom stopped at six daughters. Fear of the wolf! Oh, all right, some other legends have it as the eighth kid or the seventh boy after a full moon or something like that. 

Also here in Brazil these fuzzers come out on Friday nights, not just full moon nights. This is a problem for me as we are always heading out to the country house on Friday nights. Seriously, do I need to think about this from now on? 

Sources here (in Portuguese):

http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobisomem

http://portal-dos-mitos.blogspot.com.br/2013/02/lobisomem.html