One way to get rid of mice (France)

Old friend Valerio has two cats, yet they won't catch mice.  I wondered aloud, to him, if it might be a feature of urban, modern-day cats, because they're being looked after so well by humans.

    The French farm that I used to go to had something like five cats at the beginning (on my first visit in April 1996), doubling (or trebling??) by 2011.

    Whenever the farm mistress heard scuttling in the ceiling, she'd stop feeding the cats for a while, then take them up to the attic and release them there.

(France)

Pig training (France)

For the first time since I began visiting the French farm in 1996, I didn’t have to rush back to London for the start of the school term, so I overlapped with the pigs.  

I’d always known about — and benefited from, when I arrived in the summer — the homemade sausages, ham and pâté.  This time, the two pigs arrived a couple of weeks before my departure, so I got the chance to feed them the kitchen scraps and the vegetable garden rejects.  

On the first few feeding trips, I’d just walk up to the pen (a room-like enclosure with only the bottom half of the door in place, rather like a stable door) in silence.  My raising the bucket to throw the contents over the half door would catch the pigs by surprise, and their violent shuddering and loud snorting would, in turn, catch me by surprise and make me jump (without the snorting).

I decided to train the pigs to get used to me before one of us had a heart attack.  

About five metres from the pen, I’d start calling out, in a lilting musical voice (which I assumed would be soothing and friendly): “H-e-y, p-i-g-s.  It’s m-e-e-e!”  Sure enough, no startled violent shuddering and loud snorting.  It worked every single time after that.  

I was starting to feel very pleased with myself for having come up with the idea of training the pigs.

Soon after, however, I discovered that I could’ve saved myself and the pigs all this fright by dropping off the food the right way.  

In the back wall are two ground-level concrete troughs, half of which sticks into the pig enclosure with the other half sticking out of the pen into the adjoining barn.  One just goes into the barn, stands on that side of the wall and drops the food into the troughs.  The pigs will approach from their side and stick their snouts as far as they can reach into their respective troughs.  All very civilised (if a bit noisy — pigs like to express their gratitude and pleasure by grunting as they feed).  

No chucking the food all over the floor for the pigs to find.  

No raising the bucket above shoulder level, which was probably what frightened the living daylights out of them in the first place.

The other thing about feeding the pigs my original, ignoramus way is that in its eagerness, one of the pigs would greet me by rearing up and putting its front trotters on the half stable door, with its huge head at a level that’s easily above mine, and grunt at me, which is all quite scary if you’re a five-foot-tall townie. Feeding them through the troughs eliminated this over-enthusiastic welcome.

And finally, I also often ended up tipping some of the contents over the pigs, so they'd be left with bits of vegetable and kitchen scraps trailing all over their backs and heads.  

Poor pigs, having to put up with this pretend peasant!  

So who needed training after all?  The pigs or the pig-feeder??

(France, September/October 2011)

(The pretend peasant: 

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7131343870273860188/7425579256046490558)

Matter over mind in reverse? (France)

About twelve days before my departure from the French farm on 03 October, Serge and Jeanette started discussing at the dinner table locking up the dogs (and further away from the farm house as well) in readiness for the arrival of old friends Simon and Mauricette, so that they (Simon and Mauricette, not the dogs) wouldn't be disturbed by the nocturnal growling (from the dogs, not Simon and Mauricette).

    I chipped in with, "But if they're locked up, they'll be barking, which will still disturb Simon and Mauricette."

    Serge immediately commented that my French was now good enough for me to understand things and to communicate my opinions as well.  (Between you and me, he didn't notice that a lot of what I said was pidgin French and gesturing / miming.  He understood my message, so he took it to be French...)  

(See the other, related blog entry: Matter over mind in reverse https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2011/10/matter-over-mind-in-reverse.html )

(Gers, S.W. France, September 2011)

Completely free-range now (France)

I found a new development on the French farm on my visit this year: it has gone even more free-range.  

    When I first spotted the chickens wandering around the defunct kitchen garden next to their corralled area late afternoon on my first day, I was rather alarmed and reported this to farm mistress Jeanette.  She reassured me that it was legit and intentional.  It was to let them scrabble around in that area for a change of environment and food source.

    Another thing I noticed — on my arrival at the farm house, because I nearly tripped over her — was that there was a dog lying down calmly on the floor of the living/dining room in front of the stove.  

    I say calmly because she didn’t even bother to try and shift out of the way, as most dogs would do if they were sleeping in the path of passing feet.  (This turned out to be Mizou — see blog Eats shoots and leaves.)

    Finally, the cats, which used to be banned from the house as well, bar one (see blog Minou).  This year there’re about a dozen of them — after the first ten, I gave up counting as I only have ten fingers — five of which are kittens a few months old (under a year, I’d say, although I’m bad at telling age — see blog Minou).  

    Not only have they increased in number, they have also increased in temerity — jumping in through any open windows (two in the living/dining room, one in [deceased] Grandma Meimei’s old bedroom, one in the master bedroom upstairs which was assigned to me for my month-long stay) and helping themselves to any soft surface for kipping on, including my lap — which has the added advantage of being warm as well.  

    Make the mistake of having eye contact with them, even if accidental, and they’ll make a beeline for you, leaping straight onto your lap without even asking for permission first.  They also help themselves freely to the shop-bought dry cat food — straight out of the bag.

(For more on the cats, see Purrfect pals.)

(Gers, France, September/October 2011)

Eats shoots and leaves:  https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2011/10/eats-shoots-and-leaves.html 

Purrfect pals:  https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2011/10/purrfect-pals_20.html 

Minou:  https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2011/07/minou.html 

It's more fun this way (London / France)

It was a Sunday in 1985 and a group of us were invited round to Adam’s for lunch.

After sitting at the table for a few hours, someone suggested we go and play croquet in the garden.  As it was winter, the days were short and it was very dark outside, so I said, “But it’ll be impossible to see in the dark.”  Someone else said, “It’s more fun this way!”

This is the approach I adopt with my visits to the French farm.  Not knowing the language (and to tell the truth, even if I did, their strong local accent would render all that knowledge practically useless anyway) means that I have to guess what they might be saying, waiting for key words to confirm my conjecture.  

This makes eavesdropping a very interesting exercise, because they think I have zero French so they are quite free with their comments (about me or otherwise) and also because I have to learn not to give the game away when I do understand certain bits (cf. my other blog entry: The Two Italians in Prague) by remaining poker-faced.  

When the phone rings at lunch time, I immediately surmise it’s someone who knows them well, someone who will know they’ll be sitting down indoors to lunch, not out and about the farm tilling the fields or tending to the animals.  

When the phone rings late’ish at night, I know it’ll be one of the two daughters, and the bisou* uttered by farm mistress Jeanette at the end of the call will provide confirmation (and double-confirmed when she then informs me it’s Colette or Isabelle).

(London, 1985; France, 1996-2011)

* bisou:  (from googling) a French word that is an informal, masculine noun meaning a “kiss” or a “little kiss”.  It is often used in spoken language to express an informal, friendly kiss, particularly with children. The plural form, “bisous” (pronounced the same way), is commonly used at the end of a letter, email, or text message as an equivalent of “Love,” “Lots of Love,” or ‘Kisses” when addressing close friends or family.

The Two Italians in Prague: https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2011/07/two-italians-in-prague.html 

The loner hen (France)

There is a motley collection of animals on the farm: cows, turkeys and chickens, rabbits, dogs and cats.  And, in my first few years of visiting, starting from 1996:  ducks and geese as well.

The cows are left out in the fields to graze, and would only come in for their vaccinations, or if the weather is going to turn bad.

The dogs and cats are free to wander around, although most of their time is spent in a horizontal position in the shade out of the hot summer sun.  (Temperatures here could get to 42C.)  Hard life being a dog or a cat.  

The turkeys and chickens are kept in a corralled area, but on my visit last summer, I saw a lone hen running around, staying close to Dino (see blog entry Dino the dirty dog).  They went everywhere together.

Upon enquiry, it turned out that she hated being cooped up like the rest of her fowl folk, and kept breaking out.  After the nth time of catching her and returning her to the corral, Colette’s mother Jeanette decided to let her be.  The hen never gave her any more trouble after that.

Colette’s father Serge left some bales of hay in the barn/garage area, and the hen took to laying an egg on top of one of the bales.  After Serge removed the bales, she carried on laying her eggs there, straight onto the concrete floor, in the exact same spot where she’d been laying them thus far.

(France, August/September 2010)

Dino the dirty dog:  https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2011/07/dino-dirty-dog.html