In Sapa, Vietnam

In Sapa, Vietnam

About Me

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Sharing time between Southampton and Noyal-Muzillac in southern Brittany. Sports coach, gardener, hockey player, cyclist and traveller. I studied an MA in Management and Organisational Dynamics at Essex University in 2016-17. Formerly an Operations Manager with NEC Technologies (UK) Ltd.

Monday 11 February 2013

La Vie Sauvage

"Yes, definitely, that was done by une biche"

Lucien is our neighbour opposite and my "Go To"  person for tricky gardening issues and we were on our field surveying a chewed branch on our juvenile Victoria Plum.

"Or possibly un cerf ...." he added less positively.

I wasn't so sure - we'd spent a month wondering what sort of animal had eaten the whole of the top of a young apple tree in the field before one of Dominique's cows got away onto our land and took off a matching amount of the crab apple next to it (the apples survived and are growing well now - just a bit misshapen).

Deer are an infrequent sight around our land, almost always absent between September and March when La Chasse (the hunt) is in season. Last Sunday a long procession of 25 of the ubiquitous white Peugeot/ Renault/ Citroen farmers vans came along our road - initially I thought that a White Van Owners' club had arranged a rally at Jean and Claudette's house but then I twigged it was La Chasse moving from one area that they'd frightened off all the wildlife from to another.

Lucien then took a look at our molehills - "Ahh, ils sont tres malin les taupes ...".  2011 was a good year for molecatching for us, Possibly the moles were a bit naive or possibly we had more time to set the traps but a few successes early in the year seemed to discourage the others. In 2012 the moles came back spoiling for a fight and took a positive pleasure in spiking our traps by pushing soil into them to set them off and then heading off in the opposite direction to push up another molehill. Another of our neighbours, Jean, gave me his advice last summer - "I don't bother with traps any longer - I just put broken glass in the runs" (moles are haemophiliac and will die if cut). After we tried this the moles showed their complete disdain for Jean's solution by pushing the broken glass out of the ground on top of new molehills.

Lucien then warned me that coypu were in the area and to watch carefully the banks of our pond in case they tried to move in. And, for good measure, that the year before we bought La Basse Cour there had been a fox's den under the tumbledown wine store.

With all this wildlife it's no wonder the cats look a bit intimidated when they go out in the dark winter's mornings ........