Sheep Cry

I had a friend staying with me for the past week, and we spent Saturday afternoon and night in Toulouse. Her plane was scheduled to leave early Sunday morning so this seemed like a fun way to finesse the schedule.

At 6:30 in the evening, while we were still window shopping, rain started falling. Luckily, I had carried a small umbrella with me and we shared it as we made our way back to the Place du Capitole where our intended restaurant was located.

As we walked, the rain intensified with each step. My left shoulder and side was soaked, her right shoulder and side was soaked. Then the hail started to fall, and the rain was so heavy, that we were forced to stop and seek shelter in a small eyeglass store. The street turned into a river, with swollen tributaries pouring into it. The Petit Bateau shop across the street was not living up to its name and it started to flood. The women clerks were wielding mops to futilely push the water away.

I was hoping that Mother Nature was not giving my little farm the same treatment. I was nervous all night having imagined the scenario of big Blanche and little Soixante-Douze and all the walnuts floating down our flooding ruisseau, down the wide river all the way to Bordeaux and then dumping into the sea.

When I drove back home in the morning the weather was parfait: dry, clear, unseasonably warm and sunny. I wound my way home on the small back roads through slowly drifting leaves. Boar hunters roamed the hills in their orange vests with their dogs bounding ahead of them. I pulled into the driveway, pleased to see the blue shutters of the house surrounded with its pots of bright geraniums and hyacinths all welcoming me home.

It certainly didn’t look as if it had rained a single dropl while I was gone. The ground was almost sandy it was so dry. The nuts were still here, not on their way around the Horn of Africa. The sheep were lying down under a tree trying to keep cool, chewing their cuds.

I picked nuts for five hours yesterday afternoon . . . by hand. I didn’t take the machine out because I had ran it over the entire large grove the previous day, and there wasn’t an overwhelming amount of nuts to pick up; so I thought I would profit from the exercise, bend, squat, bend, squat, bend, squat; and, I also didn’t want to deal with the dust and the noise of running the machine; and, there’s no reason to waste gas when I’d rather pick up nuts with the birds serenading me and packs of boar hunting dogs howling in the distance.

At one point, I took a short break to go over and pet Blanche. Soixante-Douze still isn't interested in the joys of human contact. Blanche was lying down, and I sat down with her to hug her. She had the saddest look and I noticed for the first time that she had tears under her eyes that dried into a shiny film on her hair. (She has hair on her face, not wool.) I was worried that she might be sick because she seemed so listless and not her usually happy self.

As the afternoon languished into evening, the constant howling of the dogs made me think that perhaps Blanche sensed that there was a hunt going on and this was what was upsetting her. I really think that theory is the correct one because once the howling stopped, she and Soixante-Douze got up and started eating, and later, when I called them, Blanche came bounding towards me, and was very affectionate. All traces of tears or sadness were gone.

I don’t think that Blanche was frightened for herself by the howling packs of dogs. If that was the case, I think she would have hidden in her shelter, or under her favorite bush, or would have come running to me.

I think she was feeling a deep sense of sadness and sympathy for the hunted boars.

Monsieur Burc is our local carpenter and he’s also the head of the local boar hunting association. For months, we’ve been waiting for him to give us an estimate on the repair of our mill roof. In the summer, he was too busy with work. But then boar hunting season began in September and he's too busy hunting. Roger even badgered him last week on our behalf. But still, the only time I see Monsieur Burc, is when he’s dressed in orange, scouting during the week for places to hunt boar, and then on the weekend when he’s out hunting boar. Yesterday, I drove by him as he and a large group of men were standing at a crossroads, everyone of them with a gun slung over their shoulder. I said bonjour to him, but thought better of nagging him about the estimate in front of his hunting buddies. They waved me on through the intersection.

I told my husband last night, that if the boars wanted a safe place to hide from the local hunters, and their leader Monsieur Burc, they should congregate in our mill, because Burc won’t set foot near it until hunting season is over.

The LeMonde newspaper web site has a very accurate weather forecast for every departement in France. I pulled it up last night, and they’re predicting heavy rain for us the next five days. We really do need the rain here, but it means that I will be hand picking nuts every day this week, and lots of nuts because they fall more rapidly in the rain and wind. The nut machine doesn’t work when it is wet. The wet dirt and mud clog up its brushes. Blanche and Soixante-Douze will get needed showers. But the mill might collapse as its roof caves in and then I’ll have a big mess having to get rid of all the dead boar that took refuge in it.