Wild boar are very present in the area where I live, but it's not often we see them strolling down the road in a suburban zone. They are on the list of 'birds and beasts to be hunted and slaughtered' by blokes in many-pocketed khaki jackets who disturb weekends by firing off shot guns in pretty places.I was thus delighted to see evidence of a ruse in the boar who had realised that hunters do not fire guns near houses. We have a small pine wood opposite the house, and it was minding its own business in a protected area. NG was telling me that when boar visit certain houses on the outskirts of the village, especially those with a beautiful lawn (at vast expense) they ravage the garden by digging it all up in search of roots and worms. This does not make them popular.
When my eldest tried to tell his pals about the boar sighting, they didn't believe him and insisted they set off and track it. He was worried about this because boar can weigh up to 200kg but I told him that they would be making so much the noise, the boar would be long gone. However, if by some miracle they did come across it, under no circumstances should they approach it as they can be very dangerous. I made sure the pals understood this too, which cooled their ardour somewhat, and they saw that my eldest had not been making up his story. Off they went for the sake of form but saw nothing - no surprise.
The last time I saw wild boar in the wild was several years ago on a trip back from Bordeaux along the main road, avoiding the autoroute. It was around midnight and we were in the middle of nowhere. Woods and fields shone beneath a full moon, deserted and isolated. We turned one corner whereupon my ex-h slammed on the brakes because there, in the middle of the road, dozing peacefully was a family of boar, lying on the warm tarmac. They were not in a hurry to get up and let us pass, so when the car approached, they had to get their skates on, their hoofs slithering on the slippery road surface.
On that same journey - it was quite a surreal one - we came across a mass of frogs crossing the road. There must have been thousands of them. My ex-h did what he could to avoid them but it was impossible to avoid a little carnage. I think we somewhat regretted not taking the autoroute. The journey took something like seven hours instead of four, we would have avoided needless deaths, but we wouldn't have seen the boars. Hmm, tricky one.
I think I would be terrified if I saw a boar face to face - or snout to snout, or whatever you're supposed to say. They caused an awful lot of damage in my parents-in-law's orchard, so much so that they had to abandon it.
ReplyDeleteMy husband's uncle hunts and last Christmas (during a brief reunion with said husband :-)) he made us a civet with a boar he had shot. I don't eat meat but I tasted it to be polite and as meat goes, it was very nice.
As for the squashed frogs...yuk!
Mind you, it depends if they are two or four-legged frogs!
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely.
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Well it depaneds what kind of boar too...as a two legged frog may say!
ReplyDeleteng
I see wild boars from time to time when walking my dogs. They look scary and I'm always worried the dogs will provoke them and leave me to face the music.
ReplyDeleteAngela
Obélix had the right approach to boars - use them as neck-scarves while still warm, and then onto the spit.....
ReplyDeleteirritating the boar syndrome - everyone else near us has seen entire families of boar (babies as well) - the closest we came was black blur in the trees.
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