Local matters ....

We have just become hosts to where our newly arrived guests anticipate spending their winter.  With somewhat a lack of consideration they arrived in the small hours of this morning while we were asleep in our top bedroom.  Jane was the first to greet them with "Oh no!  Damned loires again!".  Loires, aka glis glis or edible dormice, are nocturnal, cute looking creatures with big dark eyes and like to hibernate particularly in roof spaces.  Before eventually dozing off or several months in the depths of winter they naturally like to get a suitable store of food in for the period,

Unfortunately they make their presence known by much scratching and scrabbling about in the roof space during the night as well as leaving smelly reminders there of their presence.  We have discussed with local people as to the best means of ridding ourselves of these unwanted guests, most common suggestion is to put poisoned bait down but that leaves the unsavoury  problem of slowly decomposing rodents in the roof.  Several others say that they don't bother about them and just let the beasts get on with their little lives.   We had this problem last winter and resolved it by leaving a radio playing very loudly during the day - loires do not like noise nor to be disturbed particularly in the day so they packed their little bags and left after about four days of dreadful French pop music.  Guess what strategy we are using this time?  That's right, more very loud, awful French pop music.

Several days ago we were having coffee at a local café with friends and one mentioned that her English neighbours were complaining of having their sleep disturbed every night.  The disturbance is not due to traffic, late night revellers etc as they live in a very rural spot amongst open farmland.  Eventually the source of their interrupted sleep was traced to a field some twenty metres away adjacent to their garden.  The actual noise is a constant clicking from an electric cattle fence considerately placed by the farmer to prevent his cattle straying into their garden.

The first recourse of said English couple was not to speak with the farmer but to the local mayor.  His response was to state the obvious that they had chosen to live in a rural environment, that the problem was not his and legally there was nothing that he could do.  A suggestion was however proffered that perhaps they might consider purchasing some ear plugs!

Thinking of adjacent fields we are enjoying another rural delight today, our local farmer, Alain, has just begun the annual agricultural ritual of muck spreading in the field next to our home - luvverly ...  Or as Farmer Brian would have politely described the process as 'flit shinging', well something like that anyway ...