More Animals in our Lives #10
The Unadventurous Traveller
We spent as much time outdoors as possible, enjoying the good weather when it was here and exploring the garden and surrounding countryside. Whilst Dale is the photographer and loved capturing the wild animals we came into contact with, we also had some animals that shared our lives permanently.
Pets
We have one pet rabbit who belongs to Brooke. We think he is one of the grumpiest rabbits we have ever met. However, you would be grumpy too if you were sold from your original family because they got bored with you. When I bought the rabbit from his French family, the vendor told me the rabbit was a girl called ‘cuddles’ in French and that she was very tame and fully grown. How wrong could one lady be? This rabbit must have put up with some awful behaviour as it was quite scared of people and hated any fuss or touching at all.
Brooke decided after much discussion to call her Minnie after Minnie Mouse. However, this sweet, ‘lion head’, little black girl rabbit, turned out to be a large, quite grumpy, boy rabbit who had some more growing to do! No wonder he'd been so grumpy - we’d been referring to him incorrectly as a girl all this time and his pride was hurt. When the weather was good, we would let him out into the walled garden behind the kitchen, where he could run, play in the overgrown flower beds and hide under the trampoline. He loved it! He chewed on the sweet grass and weeds that he liked and could hide where the humans or predators couldn’t see him.
On several occasions he ran away, breaking out of his enclosure to hide in barns, or in the vegetable patch or just to run for the sake of it! We used to run round after him, which I think he loved, stopping every so often to catch his breath and letting us catch him up. Once he ran and ran (gosh that rabbit can run fast!) and ran right past the gite. I was so worried that he would get squashed by a car or disappear forever. But he’s not stupid! He knows where his dinners come from - he hid under our cars for maximum difficulty in retrieval, but we did retrieve him in the end! I have since started to refer to him as Roberto Rabbit, as I feel this is more befitting for him. He is a clever boy as he is now multilingual, understanding English, French and now Catalan too. But he never says very much.
The Girls
Dalton had some chickens and a cockerel as well. They brought us quite a few fun moments and disgusting moments in equal measure! I never really wanted chickens, but Dalton had become so farming orientated, he really loved them - to start with. He used to pick them up for cuddles and walk around with them, petting them, which they liked. We named them all, as they became part of the family, but the names they accidentally got assigned were not names to be very proud of. We had ‘Fluffybum’, ‘Sister’ (she was Coq’s sister), ‘Spotty’ (she was black with white spots) and more with equally ridiculous names. We did try to call them Geraldine or Henrietta, but somehow I couldn't get these names to stick. Eventually we managed to get them to start laying eggs, although this took months to achieve. For that we were advised we needed a cockerel, called Coq in French. So his name was always Coq - much to our amusement (I have only just explained what this could mean to Brooke who had no idea when calling him etc!).
Mothers
The girls were good layers (eventually) with around 2-3 eggs a day. They stopped laying over winter and from time to time one of the girls became broody. We had already been through one round of having chicks. One of these babies I had found on the floor, very cold and I wasn't sure if it was alive. An hour spent on my chest and on Dalton's tummy, this chick really fought for its life and it was alive and kicking!
They were so very cute and Dalton rose to the challenge of caring for them, but we ended up with two girls and a boy. his boy 'Big bird' was seen as a threat by Coq and he victimised him terribly, even though he was his son. So we had to donate him to the farm up the road, to live out his life there, and have a different batch of females to live with and sire.
Dalton was so proud of his 'babies'
We tried to avoid any more broodiness, but one skinny young hen decided she wanted to sit on eggs. I took the eggs away everyday, but suddenly the girls seemed to go on strike. There were no eggs to be found, for days on end. I searched for hidden nests, in case they were hiding them there. The chickens had the poshest hen house around, being a stone building that used to be a stable, so it was quite large in there, with several places they could go. It was such a mystery.
I searched behind the door one day. The door was always open during the day, so the chickens could run out into their pen and peck around. There was a small window with a stone windowsill and a wooden shutter, where I had put a box quite a while ago for interest. The smallest girl hen we had was found sitting on this nest, with her small wings spread over quite a few eggs. There they were! She was promptly hoiked off this huge pile of eggs, and was quite disgruntled about it. I took all the eggs into the house - I counted 30!! We didn’t know how long she'd been acquiring all of these, and the other girls had been 'in on it' too by laying their eggs in this strange new nest - naughty!
Three mothers sitting on 2 babies
There were more broody girls, Spotty was the worst - she was broody for such a long time that, we eventually caved in and let her sit on eggs. It turned out we had three broody girls, all at the same time. They took it in turns to sit on the three eggs.
Eventually it was time for the eggs to hatch, but only two hatched. Then we saw one beautiful little fluffy yellow chick and another smaller black fluffy chick. Spotty was so proud and was ultra-protective of 'her babies'. They were so sweet, pecking around the pen as they grew, with three very protective mother hens to look after them. Dalton did manage to get to the chicks once or twice so we could check them over, but really I just couldn't get near them, as the over-protective mothers were fierce!
Too Many Mothers (spoil the chick)
As the weeks went by, I became worried about the babies as I never really saw them pecking at food and they didn't seem to be growing. We'd bought special chick feed and they had their own saucer for water, but you'd think with three mums the babies would be fine and cared for. One day as I let them out in the morning, the golden chick was nowhere to be seen. I searched for it and found it cold, half out of the nest, squashed to death. Heartbreaking.
So all our attention went into little Blackie (see what I mean about the unimaginative naming!) It didn't seem to be drinking and certainly wasn't growing, I should have intervened sooner and trusted my gut instincts. Little Blackie was found dead one morning too. I was absolutely disgusted with all three mothers for not looking after the chicks in their care. Needless to say Brooke and I were heart broken, I think Dalton was quite gutted too and the girls were never allowed to have any more babies.
Killer Coq
Coq started off quite nicely, keeping his ‘girls’ in line. Brooke didn't like it when he had a piggy back on them sometimes, but this was nature taking its course. But within months the testosterone quickly changed him into an aggressive, temperamental, ‘Killer Coq’ who ruled the pen with an iron rod and tried to rule us too!
Dalton fed them every day, but I used to give the girls and him some treats of kitchen scraps at lunchtime, mainly to be able to retrieve any eggs but also to check on them all. We had grown to love them, despite their pecky ways and scaly legs. After a while, this lunchtime snack routine became quite a task. I was running the gauntlet every lunchtime as Coq was becoming so aggressive towards me. He always made sure all the girls knew who was boss, and had started to keep his beady eye on me every time I came into the coop. He watched my every move and then he started to run at me, daring me, almost starting a fight, scaring me half to death!
Eventually he thought the time had come to have a fight with me and really show me who was boss. He had pecked at Brooke’s knee, and one day whilst the chickens were out roaming the gardens (and pecking at my flowers) he started a fight with Dale, too.
Enough was Enough
I had started to take a stick with me when I entered the pen to retrieve the eggs, in case he turned on me. Once I had to actually hit him, as he was coming for me - claws first. It was awful! I screamed and was quite angry, as he should know better than to ‘bite the hand that feeds him’ but nobody had told him that! He laid on the floor for about 10 seconds, jumped up, shook his head and carried on as if nothing had happened.
No more Coq!
After many months of this behaviour, Dalton and Dale managed to get him cornered into a box and Dalton took him up to the farm, where they could do with him whatever they wanted as they had a lot of chickens.
Within an hour, he came back down to us, in a bag, oven ready! But there was no way we could eat Coq. Despite him being a bully and an aggressive rascal, we fed him, brought him up and we couldn’t possibly eat him! So I cooked him (I can’t stand waste) and gave him to Michel, our neighbour, who apparently did not have an oven. He gladly received Coq for dinner.
Long Eared Owl Family
At the bottom of the garden a pair of long eared owls took up residence in the tall, ivy covered plum tree at the very end of the extended garden. They hooted around the garden often and after gentle introduction to the locality by Dale in his hide, the male seemed to be very accommodating and tolerated the unobtrusive photography. Dale put up a post in the rough area of our land, beyond our garden, to give the owl something to perch on and listen for mice and other prey in the rough grass. This allowed Dale to photograph him swooping down for food, and even up at the nest whilst the female sat on eggs and the male brought her food.
Dale took some great photos of these birds, sat in a hide in our garden, until one sunny May day. Whilst Brooke and I were ‘sun-babing’ as she liked to call it, Dale came over to us and warned that I should think about bringing the washing in as there was a storm coming in. This sounded totally silly as we were sunbathing, it was hot and it was the middle of the day, in May. However looking around, over the fields to the north east, the sky did look very black, so in it all came, and on went our clothes, despite being very hot.
In the space of 10 minutes we had a hail storm so ferocious and localised that it only affected our small village of Naillat. The rain started, quickly followed by the hail, which tore everything apart that it hit, the stones being the size of golf balls! All my seedlings that were harmlessly growing in plastic tubs with lids (recycled croissant containers from the supermarket made for a small greenhouse environment), all the flowers growing in the wild flower garden and any fruit or veg that were forming on established plants in the potager - were all destroyed. The falling hailstones even dented the cars!
The hailstones were so ferocious that they broke the window in the small room in the loft, that the man who showed us around the house initially had called ‘The Maid’s Room’. Referring to this room as 'The Maid’s Room' always made me laugh as it made us sound so posh that we could afford to have a maid, but that's what the room was called to us. The glass in that window was so old and thin that it smashed very easily, given the direction the hailstorms were coming from.
Across our village, over the next few days, we discovered the devastation that the freak hailstorm had caused. In Naillat village, farmers had had huge holes torn into their ancient farm buildings’ roofs, cars had been damaged, and a friend of Brooke’s (well a Mummy friend from school) told me that their brand new plastic garden furniture they had bought just the weekend before, had had so many holes punched into it, it was absolutely ruined!
Insurance companies took a long time to pay out for the damage that had been done, but René just up the lane managed to get a new roof for one of his barns out of the incident. It was said that the hailstones had been the size of chicken’s eggs.
Devastating Effect
Unfortunately, this freak natural incident had more devastating consequences. It had completely wrecked the long eared owls’ nest, which they had had to abandon along with any babies they were trying to rear. Dale never saw the long eared owls again.
Riverside photography
There was a river nearby with a weir which the bats used to frequent, swooping and hunting for small insects close to the water. In time, Dale took the flash and photography equipment down there to photograph them. In doing so, he had to be incredibly careful that the hundreds of volts that the flash equipment used as power did not fall into the water and electrocute him and goodness knows what else. He managed to get some fantastic shots of the bats in action, but of course, this was all taken by night, as this is when the bats were hunting for their food. So the set up must take place during daylight, with the hope that it is all correct for that night.
Beckstein bat flying at night
King of Them All
As there were many rivers local to us we all enjoyed a walk along the river banks, enjoying the beauty of the local area, following the Monet trail or climbing the great stones dotted along the rivers.
There was a small river very near to our house that we also used to walk along regularly. It backed onto our neighbour’s house. Whilst walking along here one day, Dale discovered a kingfishers’ nest (martin pecheur) in a fallen-down tree root mass. He set about researching this little bird, watching it at all times, to establish whether it was a current nest site for the bird and was it being used this season to rear young? What was its usual routine? Where did it hunt for food, in which direction and when?
These birds are very shy and do not like to be watched, so you have to introduce any change to their environment slowly and carefully. Bit by bit he brought a hide down to the area, which he slowly moved nearer to the nest site, ensuring the bird was not perturbed and continued to hunt and go about his daily business. He also introduced a stick for the bird to perch on, and so gradually Dale had established a bit of a one way rapport with the beautiful bird.
The Law of Nature
He was able to take some wonderful photos of this majestic bird, after weeks and weeks of preparation and a slow introduction of himself and the equipment to the bird and its environment. I would ‘lose’ Dale for weeks at a time when there was a new subject or animal to watch and study. This is the dedication he always puts into getting some of the shots that you see here. And then one day he went out early to go in the hide to photograph the kingfisher to find that the nest had been predated, dug out by some creature and the kingfisher was no more.
This is nature - wild and unpredictable and utterly sad and demoralising for anyone involved with the animal. This kingfisher nested at exactly the same site for three years and each year it got predated.
The Riverside Pest
Another animal ‘find’ that Dale loved to capture photographically were the (ragodan) coypu. They were prolific in the Creuse region where we were, and as Dale had never had them as an animal subject before he used to photograph these funny little creatures. They are not native to France, having been introduced for their fur from South America, but we have also heard that some people used to use them as a food source years ago. Nowadays, the farmers hate them as they dig into the river banks and edges of lakes, making the ground around their nest sites unstable, which then increases the likelihood of cattle hurting themselves when visiting the river for a drink.
They have funny orange teeth and look like a beaver but with a rat-like tail. Dale watched these creatures for a long time, in a similar way to the kingfisher, establishing the hide near to their nesting site, then slowly moving a little nearer without causing alarm. He found these little creatures made a lovely little ‘Mmmm’ noise to each other when they were babies..
‘London’ Roe Deer
Across the fields surrounding our garden were miles and miles of rolling fields for cattle, leading down to a small stream. Some woodland was left, a little way away, and in the evenings we could hear the deer ‘shouting’ across the fields to each other. This is a familiar sound to us, as we used to hear the call of the deer in England where we lived in the south east. It is a very loud and shouty noise, a mix of a dog barking and a human shouting. What we didn’t realise in France was that the French deer knew Dale’s name! Their barking often sounded like the deer were shouting “Dale, Dale!’ (phonetically sounding like ‘Day-el Day-el'). This made us laugh because not only were they calling Dale’s name but they were calling him in English with a London accent - in the middle of the French, Creuse countryside. We laughed at this a lot! (it's such a shame we didn't record this at the time!)
Studio
There were several animals and insects that couldn't resist coming into the house, scaring me half to death and so becoming the next photographic subject for Dale Sutton photography. The giant spider in the hall, which was as large as my hand, almost got squashed but Dale rescued it and threw it outside. The house did seem to have a lots of jumping spiders. Have you ever seen them? They are small enough not to worry me, but they jump from place to place and they're black and white striped (zebra jumping spider). In time Dale created a studio in one section of a barn, so he could photograph such insects using flash equipment and establish a natural 'set', to photograph the insects and arachnids such as the jumping spider in a controlled environment.
Photo of insect on water or grasshopper
Red Squirrels
One day we found a bat in the lounge clinging to the curtains. Another day, Dale became determined to attract red squirrels into our garden. He had seen the red squirrels in the trees in Michel's garden, which just backed onto ours, and in the oak tree near the gite, but not in our garden. He put out bird food for them for weeks, but nothing. So he made a special squirrel feeding station for them and placed it near to Michel's garden. He waited and waited but nothing happened. He did manage to get a photo of the red thief taking some bird food but they did not fall for the squirrel feeder! Then one day, a very scared, very naughty red squirrel sneaked into the house to have a look around. We found it trying to frantically get out of the closed study windows. Here's a video of it:
Secrets in the Garden
We found a big, snuffly hedgehog in the garden one evening. We had had a family of hedgehogs in our garden in England for a little while, but had not seen a hedgehog since. It was such a privilege to see this secretive creature, to be able to show the kids and to take some cracking shots of it of course too!
Wall Building
The garden was full of edible snails, with white shells and very large, compared to UK snails anyway. They came out after a rain shower and quickly became collectable 'pets' for Dalton and Brooke, although they wouldn't stay out and kept wondering off. Our snails never got eaten, though! They would shelter in amongst the different stones of the walls around the garden. The garden had several walls in varying degrees of dilapidation. Bit by bit, Dale began to rebuild these walls, in the walled 'swimming pool' garden, the wall nearing Michel's property and the large back garden.
We found several colonies of short-tailed field voles living within and around these walls. So naturally these funny, inquisitive little 'mice' as we used to call them became photography subjects. They were in the walls, spying on us, when we played and sunbathed in the swimming pool garden. The field voles took fruit from the raspberry bushes we had planted before we got a chance to pick them, and they got quite brazen - running out and even fighting each other whilst I was watching them. The mice of Brambly Hedge always sprang to mind.
The long wall of the bottom back garden had several large sections where it had tumbled down, we think probably due to a tractor reversing into it accidentally over the years, as surrounding the back garden on three sides were farmers’ fields. Carefully and laboriously Dale built these walls back up. He had never built a stone wall before living in France, yet this was a skill he practised again and again. Having completed the back garden wall, he set to creating a wooden pergola atop a bricked/paved patio area. He enjoyed having the freedom of creating the rectangular patio, with circular design built in, using an antique floor tile in the very centre, found in the barn. He built the wooden supports for the pergola into the wall as he built it. We planted some vines at the foot of each support, which would, in time, provide much needed shade overhead, and grapes as well.
There were many other out-door restoration projects Dale undertook, I will have to tell you in another episode. The large back garden allowed us all to have some peace and quiet, and time away from each other, or from the hustle and bustle of life.
Cuddly House Pests
Another animal prevalent in France and considered an absolute nuisance if you happen to have them in your house is the loire or edible dormouse, which is absolutely beautiful if you get to see these shy creatures, but if you have them take up residence in your loft or within your house, they can eat through wires, gnaw and scratch about at night and are generally destructive to your property. Our friends in another village had quite a problem with these loirs, and used to catch them in a humane trap and set them free in woods elsewhere. However, another loire would take its place within weeks, despite blocking all the known holes!
We didn't have any loirs in our house, luckily, but they did 'hang out' in the hazelnut trees around the house, snacking on the nuts all night. Dale of course tried to photograph them, but it was so difficult, in the thick of the trees, moving around quickly in the pitch of night.
Gru Migrating
The common cranes or gru flying in V formation across the sky was always a sign that winter was on its way. The gru departing France for warmer climes was definitely a sign to us all that the cold weather was on its way. As they flew they made a small, warbled cry 'Gru Gru'.
Another winter was approaching, another cold period to endure. For Dale this meant wood, wood and more wood, cutting and bringing in so much wood for the wood burner to try to keep us warm. For me this meant three pairs of socks, layers and chilblains every winter on toes and fingers. Still my body worked super hard to keep me warm, I always lost weight. The kids seemed to be oblivious to any cold of course, as they tore around, having fun.
Despite the wonderful animals and idyllic lifestyle seven months of the year, the other five months were incredibly cold, regularly reaching -8 degrees and occasionally we had -16. Brrrrr!
We started to wonder if there was a better, warmer place to live? We loved the house, we loved the environment and the local friends but the winters were so long. Brexit was approaching too, was this the place we wanted to live in for the rest of our lives? Dale started to research.....
If you would like to read more about our travels, adventures and happenings then you could join the Facebook page for updates: The Unadventurous Traveller or see our page on Instagram which shows work as it’s happening to the Chapel.Renovation and follow this blog.
All photographs in this blog are subject to copyright and owned by Dale Sutton.
Please share this with your friends so more people can read it, thank you. See you next time!
Catherine
You can catch up on some of the previous blogs here:
#6 Finding Friends and Hidden Treasure
#5 Manoir Makeover - more doing it up - Part 2
#4 Signing and Doing it up - Part 1
#3 France - a new life, a new home
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