Furrier Ion Francu has been living off snails for several years now. He buys them from collectors in the villages around Fagaras and sells them to a factory in Targu-Mures, which in its turn ships the "merchandise" to luxury restaurants in France, Holland and Germany.
Everybody in Cincu knows where Francu's house is, as this is where elder people or children gather in a line with bags and buckets in their hands. They wait in line in an orderly fashion to get their money.
The cellar is full or trunks neatly arranged by the walls. Some of those trunks are filled with snails brought by the villagers in Toarcla, who will get enough money to buy bread and edible oil for a while. For it is too hot outside now, snails hide in the tall grass.
Ion Francu jokingly calls himself "head snailer." He has been living off snails for eight years now. He collects the little animals, he transports them to Targu-Mures and makes some good money out of it. The snails then reach the plates of the people in Paris, served in restaurants by the Seine.
With a glass of raspberry juice on the table, his dog curled against his feet, Francu is proudly looking at his garden. He achieved it all by hard work.
"I used to be a furrier and a tailor. I used to make durable fur coats. After the Revolution I started collecting snails. As anybody around here. I would go and look for them in the grass, using a detector. How does a snail detector look like? It's simple. It's a one metre long peeled stick taken from a nut tree you hit the grass with," says the man, proud of his joke, as many city people with airs have been tricked by his snail detector.
The snails are best to collect from April through early in June, because the grass grows tall by that time and is hard to find any snail. He would get as much as 80 tonnes of snails from those collecting them in good years. He would take them to the factory in a truck.
This year, there have not been as many snails as usual, so that only 30 tonnes were collected. He even wanted to raise snails in his own garden at one time, but he gave up. "Why should I raise snails? The gypsies might have come and stole them and then try and sell my own snails back to me," he says in a bitter tone of voice.
Snails can speed up to four metres an hour and are quick to reproduce. They lay an average of 50 eggs and reach maturity in two years. They live in shaded moist spots, and can survive up to two weeks without food in captivity. Ion Francu feels the best area to collect snails is Transylvania, better than Moldova and the Republic of Moldova, as they can thrive only on good grass, in green areas. "The biggest and most snails can be found only in Transylvania," he says.
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