La Chasse

This is nothing to do with flushing toilets, but hunting. Now I was a vegetarian for ten years, and although I have dropped off the meat wagon, I consider myself to be pretty tolerant of the local customs here. But not at any price.

Up to now, the hunters go after the wild boar that damage their fodder crops. Fair enough. They have a glass or two, allegedly, before heading off of a Sunday morning into the woods. The season is during the winter, so avoiding certain wooded areas while a hunt is on is not too onerous either.

But it now transpires that cages are being built in one of the fields nearby for rabbits to be kept for a couple of weeks before releasing them . This is with the express purpose of hunting them for sport. To me that's a whole different ball-game. I'm not happy because this means that our vegetables will be at risk, (when this was done once before, our nearest neighbour lost most of her garden to them). I'm not happy because the implication is that hunters will be wandering around the fields nearby shooting rabbits. Gone are the worry-free bike rides for my 8yr old. I'm not happy because no-one told anyone in the village this was going to happen, it had to be discovered. I'm particularly not happy because it's our friend bunny who has offered his field for the cages to be built, who was here having a beer with me the day before we found out, and he didn't think it worth mentioning to us.

So, we have an active lady in the little hamlet the other side of the field from here who wrote a letter and has done the rounds to collect signatures. The letter asks the hunt chairman to stop the project, at least while we have the opportunity to find out more about what's planned. I don't hold out much hope that they will take any notice, but it's as well to let them know that we're pissed. Personally I'd have written a different letter, and found it hard to decide whether to sign this one or not. Fighting and conflict is not my style. And we have a friendship involved, plus an influential person, the hunt chairman, who could sour other things for us with his other hats on. But what the hell, we signed, and it's in the lap of the gods for now.