What animals and birds inhabit Afghanistan's land and sky? Frankly speaking, I don't know. What I do know is there are no Afghan Hounds in Afghanistan.

As you ride a car you see numerous herds of sheep, goats, and cows grazing on mountain slopes. If you are lucky or travel in the right place, you'll see camels as well.

The most common animal, though, is the donkey. This ubiquitous creature, lovely and hard-working, if somewhat sullen and stubborn, truly deserves a place on the country's coat-of-arms or, at least, on its banknotes and coins.

Camels look dull and smell awful. They are apparently overworked: they carry stuff over long distances without drinking and eating for days. This is actually why men like the undemanding animals. One Uzbek family in Mazar-e-Sharif used a camel to crush sunflower seeds to make cooking oil. The camel had his left eye covered with a piece of leather so that he would walk around and around, pulling along heavy millstones. The owner and oil producer had to walk in circles all day too, which was only fair to the poor beast. When the man stopped, so did the camel. To have a test drive, I made a few circles myself, without pulling the millstones, as a matter of fact, but got dizzy within minutes, tripped over my own foot, and nearly fell under the camel's hooves, causing rather derisive laughter on the part of the camel owner and the translator, Engineer Imran. The oil-making camel had one hump, which would classify him as Arabian or dromedary. Most camels in Asia are Bactrians, or two-humped, but because camels were always loaded with goods when I saw them, I wasn't able to determine which variety prevailed in Afghanistan. I didn't bother to ask.

During my trips to Afghanistan, I spent most of the time covering war-related stories, so my acquaintance with farm animals was rather limited.

It was quite a surprise to see two bulls pulling a wooden plow, as a man steered them into the right direction, across a large cornfield outside of Jabal os-Saraj. With so many horses in Afghanistan, I expected them to be the main driving force of agriculture. But I was wrong. Afghans use horses for war or for sports, and, rarely, for transportation.

Buzkashi is the most common use of the animal. The game is about picking up a decapitated goat or calf and placing it in a designated spot of a stadium or any large open space where this traditional game takes place. The difficulty is that several teams or dozens of individual players on horseback, vigorously using their leather whips, try to prevent you from winning and want to get the prize, usually cash, for themselves. In the picture above, the dead body of a calf is somewhere inside the moving mass of humans and equines.

The other big sports involving animals and birds are dog and rooster fights. Both are too controversial to appear on my Web site. These "sports" as well as partridge fights and camel fights were banned by the Taliban, for which I award more kudos to the Knowledge Seekers.

Afghans do not keep dogs or cats in their homes as pets. The reason is these animals are considered dirty, at least so said Engineer Imran. Dogs and cats walk everywhere so they are likely to carry infection, the pest specialist explained. Considering overall hygienic standards and customs in Afghanistan, however, I wouldn't put all the blame on the animals. I assume Afghans are just afraid of dogs. But what about cats? I don't have an answer to this question.

Afghans do like birds, and men and children come to feed hundreds, if not thousands, of white pigeons in the park near the Rauze Sharif Mosque, dubbed "Blue Mosque" by journalists, in Mazar-e-Sharif.

During travels outside of Mazar, I also saw eagles perched on clay walls or fences but my attempts to photograph them failed.

A man shows off his pet bird in a market in Mazar-e-Sharif. February 2002.