A few days ago, a bit of half-hearted barking by Fitzroy informed me that something slightly irregular was happening at Gamone. When I rushed downstairs, I discovered that we had received the visit, for the first time ever, of my neighbor's five donkeys. Fitzroy's barking only appeared, of course, to be half-hearted. The truth of the matter was that my dog was in total control of the situation. I would imagine that, in Fitzroy's mind, this meant that the donkeys were grazing contentedly, and gave no signs of attempting to enter my house. So, in a canine sense, all was more-or-less in order. During the minute or so that it took me to race back upstairs to phone my neighbor, the donkeys had moved down the road. By the time that Jackie appeared on the scene, his animals had discovered the nice patch of green fodder alongside Madeleine's place. Jackie borrowed a rope from his aunt and had no trouble leading the matriarchal donkey, followed by the others, back up to my place... where my own donkeys, Moshé and Fanette, looked down with curiosity upon all the movement.
[Click to enlarge]
With so many donkeys now present at Gamone (count me, if you so insist, in their numbers), I've often suggested to Jackie that we should set up some kind of a business. If and when my son François finds time to visit me one of these days, now that his huge TV series of moped shows is finished (the production, but not the airing), I'll ask him for advice in the spirit of the story of the writer Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-1894], author of Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, evoked in one of my son's excellent travelogues [display].
Otherwise, Jackie and I might look into the idea of bringing our donkeys up to a cabaret level, like the smart donkeys of Emilienne d'Alençon [1869-1946], who performed at the Casino de Paris.
Besides presenting her donkeys, Emilienne was quite a talented young lady, generally described in French as a courtisane. This term (for which I can find no good English equivalent) designated an attractive female who had succeeded in imagining elegant ways of marketing her charms in the context of distinguished and wealthy admirers such as the Duke of Crussol d'Uzès, King Léopold II of Belgium and the jockey Percy Woodland. Even an aging donkey such as me could surely be infatuated by the splendor of such a trainer.
Of a sexually ecumenical disposition, Emilienne got on well with the famous model of Toulouse-Lautrec known as La Goulue [1866-1929].
Emilienne also got involved with a British lesbian poetess who called herself Renée Vivien [1877-1909] and wrote in French.
Nicknamed Sappho 1900, Renée died in a suicidal atmosphere at the tender age of 32, in the purest of depressive romantic traditions.
Talking about smart donkeys (as we once were), I happen to possess a remarkable but little-known bible on donkey wisdom (a precious gift from Christine) written by Victor Hugo.
Naturally, before making plans about their future education, prior to some kind of music-hall show, I asked my donkeys for their opinion on this project. Moshé seemed to like the idea, but Fanette reacted surprisingly (she's a young female) in a strictly negative manner.
I've told my neighbor that I would be happy to go ahead with some kind of a project aimed at bringing our donkeys up to a music-hall level.
We both agree however (at the risk of appearing as old-fashioned male sexists) that it would be unwise for the donkeys and us to get involved in any kind of fragile business context with romantic lesbian dancers and suicidal female poets, no matter how enticing they might appear.
Grass is great for cows, but donkeys prefer by far the fresh leaves and delicate blossoms of plum trees.
A tempest has been blowing at Gamone over the last 24 hours. Personally, the wind always drives me crazy. I wasn't born to reside in the Rhône valley, where the Mistral can blow for days and nights on end. I guess I wasn't born to be a yachtsman, either, or a glider pilot. Windy cities are the worst of all, particularly when the presence of tall buildings focuses the wind blasts upon unwary pedestrians. But the donkeys can thank the tempest for breaking this branch and offering them this unexpected feast.
This is the first group photo I've ever succeeded in taking of all the five donkeys of Gamone.
From left to right: Fanette, Moshé and the three female donkeys acquired by my neighbor Jackie last year. The two donkey families are not in direct physical contact, because their respective paddocks are separated by a couple of electric strands. So, they observe one another at a short but respectable distance... which is fine for everybody. Donkeys are aware of their precise territory, and they prefer that things stay fixed at that level.
This afternoon, I installed new plastic feed buckets for Moshé and Fanette.
I purchased these buckets through the Internet, since they're much better than anything I could find in local stores. They're made out of heavy-duty plastic, they have handles so that I can fill them with oats back at the house and carry them down to the donkey paddock, and they have solid steel brackets enabling me to slip them onto a thick wooden plank that's bolted to a pair of upright posts. So, the system appeared to be foolproof.
Alas, donkeys are no fools. When they had finished gulping down their oats, Moshé (on the left) used his powerful jaws to lift up each bucket and remove it from the supporting plank. Then he kicked them down the slopes, meaning that I had to scramble down the hill for 50 meters to get hold of the empty buckets, and then carry them back up to the house. That's exactly what I would like to avoid, particularly when the slopes are slippery or covered in snow.
The state of the donkeys' fur is like a natural barometer indicating that winter is not far away.
In the following photo, Moshé's ears are pointing back down towards Fitzroy, sensing the dog's movements, and the donkey seems to be saying to himself: "If that bloody dog tries to bite my hind legs one more time, I'll screw him."
Maybe Fitzroy sensed that Moshé might even be getting ready to transform his thoughts into action.
In any case, the dog reckoned it was no longer a good idea to hang around in the vicinity of the donkey.
This morning, I started to burn some of the dead wood that has been lying around for ages down in the donkeys' paddock.
An hour later, I was surprised to find the donkeys standing out in the sun alongside the smoldering wood, with smoke often wafting over them. I think I know what's happening. The smoke from the dry walnut wood is not particularly acrid: neither for me nor, I suspect, for the donkeys. But it seems to keep flies and other insects away from the donkeys. The proof: they're not even wagging their tails, as they normally do, constantly, to brush away flies and insects. OK, it's surely not an ideal solution, but the donkeys appear to find it efficient, at least for a while.
In 1987, on the sunny sidewalks of Fremantle (Western Australia), we often used to run into the mayor John Cattalini, who had the habit of strolling around his territory, soaking up the spirit of his electorate. My son François was amused by a facial detail. The mayor's prominent ears, protruding at right angles to his skull, seemed to flap in the America's Cup breeze as he strolled gaily through his city. "When Cattalini walks through the streets of Fremantle," my son used to say, "the city is being swept by a mobile radar system. The mayor's ears are detecting the pulse of his citizens."
These days, at Gamone, whenever I admire the marvelously mobile ears of my donkeys, I think of the mayor Cattalini in the Antipodes. Why didn't human evolution pick up this trick? With directional ears, we would know what people are saying behind our backs. As for my donkeys, the reason why they're preoccupied by what's going on behind them can be summed up in a single word: Fitzroy.
My smart dog is a cruel and cunning little bastard, who seems to have decided that those dumb donkeys need to know who's the boss at Gamone. And his technique of persuasion consists of darting in at dog speed and nipping gently the donkeys behind their rear legs, a little like leaving a business card. Fitzroy's business is simple, straightforward: "I've arrived at Gamone, I'm the new chief, the Boss, and you donkey folk had better understand it!" With the arrival of the warm weather, the Boss resides nightly in a luxuriant leafy straw-based outdoor residence that looks a little like a giant bird's nest.
Meanwhile, I'm happy to see that, for the second year, little tits (Mésanges) have made Gamone their nesting base.
Birds, still attached to our place, were darting in and out of the tree box this afternoon. Apparently, Gamone is a good address.
At Gamone (and in most other places in France, I imagine), we're right in the middle of the dandelion season. That's to say, the slopes—including my lawn—are covered in yellow flowers, and they're about to be metamorphosed into spherical seed heads, ready to be blown into every available square centimeter of the neighborhood.
As usual, I've dragged out my electric lawnmower and made a valiant effort to remove the flowers on my lawn. But I can hear the vast hordes of dandelions on the outskirts of my lawn laughing at me cynically, since they'll be taking off shortly, in kamikaze squadrons, to make amends for their fallen brethren.
The green press often warns us that cattle fart noxious methane into the atmosphere, and that humanity would be much better off if we all resorted to eating kangaroo meat, since these Down Under beasts apparently fart more sweetly.
I don't know what my compatriots—not to mention the kangaroos themselves—might think of that great idea. It's a fact that the kangaroo appears on our national coat of arms, which—in the words of a militant vegetarian and nationalistic Aussie—must not be considered as a menu! Meanwhile, when I observe the huge annual stock of dandelions here at Gamone, I say to myself that it's a pity we can't all get around to eating rabbit meat, since everybody knows that they thrive on dandelions. Here's a photo (found on the web) of a champion Flemish Giant specimen, raised in Germany, capable of producing 8 to 10 kg of meat.
Admittedly, there might be an organizational problem in making sure that the herd of meat-producing rabbits settles down in exactly the places where you have a surplus of dandelions. And you would need to slaughter them all as soon as your dandelions run out… by which time the rabbits would have switched to eating the grass of your lawn. So, I'm not sure that my idea's well thought-out. Meanwhile, I've found that mowed dandelions and grass are fine food for donkeys, particularly when it's seasoned by a sprinkling of oats.
Neither Moshé nor Fanette needs such a supplement to their diet, of course, since they're both as plump as baby mammoths.
Maybe I prepared this fodder for the donkeys to symbolize my destruction of the dandelions… which was indeed a purely symbolic destruction.
In an earlier life, at an epoch designated communally by archaeologists as BF [BEFORE FITZROY], this excavated textile specimen was no doubt a sock… but my image is of poor quality, since I don't have the necessary photographic equipment to record forensic scenes.
Today, alas, in spite of our unbounded faith in the great annual revival orchestrated by the Creator and His Hordes of Heavenly Angels, there's no way in the world that I'll ever again be able to put a foot into a resuscitated version of that sock, which has clearly gone far too far beyond the Third Day. Be that as it may, I'm determined to make a massive spring effort to restore my Gamone house and property (maybe with the help of historical photos from the present blog) to something like the state they were in back in the BF era.
Talking about my second dear dog, here's a photo of the residence that Fitzroy has set up for himself (with a minimum of help from me) after his spontaneous decision to move out of the magnificent wooden mansion that I had built for him just a little further up the street.
An obvious advantage of this new place (I'm obliged to admit) is the fact that it offers an uninterrupted day-and-night outlook over the valley: that's to say, primarily, the Cornouze. You'll understand that, for an esthete such as Fitzroy, the constant presence of this beautiful view is essential, indeed vital. Dogs do not live by bones alone.
Meanwhile, Fitzroy's sporting interests remain as usual. In that domain, I have to correct remarks I've made in the past about his activities in hose handling [display]. Maybe it's because I'm growing old—or maybe simply because because I'm not a dog—but it takes me time to understand certain things. I had imagined the case of the long hose wound around my young plum tree as a screwed-up session of hose running[display]. It is in fact a totally new sport, named hose curling. It was only this morning, thanks to the persistence of my dog, that I became fully aware of this.
Any old idiot (such as me, now that Fitzroy has made it clear to me) can tell at a glance whether we're observing hose running or rather hose curling, because they're played with quite different lengths of hose. And hose running doesn't require the presence of a tree.
Talking of plum trees and spring revival, you may recall the January anecdote about the horses of Will the Welshman and my donkeys devouring the bark of young trees down in front of the house.
Following the departure of the horses, I modified the position of the electric fence in an almost certainly vain attempt to save these trees. Well, I prayed fervently to my compatriot saint Mary MacKillop[display]. It's still too early to believe in a miracle, but this photo I took this afternoon seems to suggest that the good old sheila might have heard my pleas, and acted upon them. If so, thanks a lot, mate!
Meanwhile, since the sunny weather is, in itself, a mini miracle at Gamone, I decided—as I said earlier on in this blog post—to get stuck into cleaning up Fitzroy's winter mess. Sophia, of course, couldn't give a damn about whether or not the lawn is strewn with sticks. She's even more Zen, more of a lazy existentialist, wise but unworldly, than I am… which is saying a lot, particularly in the domain of spring cleaning. As for Fitzroy, he's clearly shocked by the idea that I might be about to get rid of all his stuff.
To be perfectly honest, for the moment, I've left the tangled twigs lying there. Fitzroy will have a chance of deciding, during the night, whether he should make an effort to redistribute them all over again. As I always say (and I'm sure my two dogs agree with me): Live and let live.
Yesterday, I told my Welsh friend Will—seen in the following photo at Gamone with his pair of splendid friends—that it was time for me to terminate my horse lessons, which I mentioned briefly in my article entitled Learning a thing or two about horses[display].
Two aspects of the situation had gotten out of control. On the one hand, unlike donkeys, these great beasts need a constant supply of fine hay in winter, and it goes without saying that I'm not in a position to obtain such a supply. Two or three local farmers have been prepared to sell me a bale of hay from time to time, but it's generally hay that they themselves have purchased from other farmers with rich pastures in relatively remote localities. Besides, that goes to explain why there's no longer much serious agricultural activity in the vicinity of Choranche. In our commune, there's only one remaining dairy-farming family: our mayor Bernard Bourne and his son Frédéric.
The second problem is a consequence of the first one, but more annoying. When the horses decide that they're not getting enough good fodder, they take action. The day before yesterday, towards the end of the afternoon, the black horse found a weak corner in the barbed-wire fence at the top of my property, and it succeeded in bursting through. When I saw it wandering around up on top of the ridge above my house, I immediately scrambled up there and cut away the dangling barbed wire, so that the animal would not injure itself if I managed to coax it back down the slopes. By that time, the piebald horse had discovered the hole, and it promptly climbed up to its mate. Night started to set in, and it was no longer possible to intervene in any way whatsoever. So I decided to postpone operations until the following morning. Besides, since there wasn't much that could be done at this point, I decided that there was no point in phoning Will, to tell him what had happened.
At 5 o'clock the next morning (yesterday), the barking of the dogs woke me, and I discovered that the two horses and the two donkeys were wandering around in the yard in front of my house. Once again, I decided that nothing could be done until daylight. Two hours later, when I went outside to evaluate the situation, all four animals had disappeared. I jumped into my car and started searching everywhere, but there was no sign of them. Around 8 o'clock, I finally got through to Will, and described the situation. He and Sylvie arrived down at Gamone a little later, and we decided to climb up to the top of the ridge to see if the animals were hanging around on the land of my neighbor Gérard Magnat. They weren't in sight. Suddenly, we glimpsed the donkeys running up from the main road, pursued by a yellow van, along the winding track that leads to Gérard's house. Will only half-believed me when I discouraged him from scrambling down in a straight line towards the house. Although it seems to be close at hand, there's a messy creek with steep banks, which can only be crossed easily by sheep (as I've known too well for several years). So, we started back down towards my house, with a view to going down the road to access Gérard's place. Within half an hour, Will had met up with his horses, on the outskirts of Pont-en-Royans, and I was able to lead my donkeys calmly back to Gamone.
Trying to grasp what had taken place during the dark hours of the night, I told Will that the donkeys, when they escape from their paddock (as has often happened), are capable of hanging around the house for hours or even days on end. Why was it that the horses ventured rapidly onto the busy road down below Gamone, in the hours before dawn, and followed it blindly towards Pont-en-Royans? Here, Will gave me another lesson on horse psychology, which might be summed up in this famous logo for Johnnie Walker whisky:
Once a horse has moved stealthily (or almost) out of its usual yard, and found freedom in the wide, wide world, it's sole desire is to keep on walking, up until it runs into a gate or some kind of barrier. Well, between Gamone and Pont-en-Royans, there are no gates, and the only barriers are a few fences around the yards of private properties.
This escapade of the two horses, accompanied by my donkeys, was an extremely dangerous excursion, which could have brought about a road accident. Obviously, I cannot tolerate this kind of risk. So, I told Will that it would be preferable if he took his horses up to Presles. And that is what he did, immediately after. As for me, I'm a little wiser about horses than I was before. Meanwhile, I've asked folk who know me (my daughter, above all) to give me a sharp kick if I were to evoke, ever again, the idea of inviting horses to Gamone as guests.
I'm probably not mistaken, dear reader, in supposing that you would be quite incapable of distinguishing between a bit of bark from, say, a walnut tree and a similar bit of bark from a plum tree. That's because you're not a donkey. These animals seem to find the bark of young plum trees considerably more tasty than that of walnut trees.
It's not as if the donkeys are consuming tree bark because they're starving. As indicated in my article entitled Learning a thing or two about horses[display], there's abundant grass in the part of the property I recently opened up to cater for the arrival of Will's horses. The simple truth is that donkeys are fond of plum tree bark in the same way that we humans are fond of plums. As for the poor plum trees (growing wild at that spot, and not particularly valuable), I'm afraid they might not survive this in-depth attack. But they will have died for a good cause: the epicurean tastes of my donkeys... and I'll have a better view of the valley.
Since Xmas eve, my donkeys are sharing their paddock and their hay with William's two horses. If ever there were any antagonism between the animals, I had planned to put the horses in an independent paddock, with their own hay. But everything seems to be going smoothly. And why not? The donkeys and the horses are like the Denisovans and the Melanesians. They appreciate company.
I've had an outage of the Internet and my house telephone for the last couple of days. Funnily, I don't think this breakdown had anything to do with the violent winter weather that hit us at the same time. It's more likely due to a mishap brought about by the armada of earth-moving engines that are working nonstop, down on the road below Gamone, installing a new sewage system for the entire district. These huge renovations (which will prevent us from driving through the main street of Pont-en-Royans for another month) don't concern me personally, because my house was renovated according to the new sanitation legislation in vigor in 1993, and I have an excellent ecological system of sewage disposal—inspected annually by the competent authorities— installed underground on the slopes below my house.
Meanwhile, Fitzroy has had his first in-depth contact with snow… and he loves it.
That's to say, he sees it as a marvelous soft support for his never-ending jousts with Sophia.
The little donkey Fanette has also experienced, for the first time, the slight discomfort brought about by the disappearance of the greenery (grass and weeds) under a 25cm-thick blanket of snow.
I prefer to speak of "slight discomfort" rather than of hunger, because the two donkeys are obscenely fat, after dining regularly on apples and walnuts over the last month or so.
As for the mésanges (wild birds, known in English as tits, which spend the winter months at Gamone), they've been happy to discover a big stock of sunflower seeds in the bird-house, and they swarm around it as a throng of a couple of dozen tiny black-and-gold creatures.
As of this morning, the sun is shining, the snow is melting, the road has been cleared by Frédéric Bourne in his tractor equipped with a giant steel blade… and my Internet is up and running. All is well at Gamone.
My article of October 27, 2019 entitled Donkey expedition day[display] described the long walk of Sylvie Rozand and me, leading three donkeys, from Presles to Gamone. Yesterday afternoon, Sylvie returned here, with a friend from Presles, to retrieve her two adult donkeys Nina and Margot. The operation went off with no problems whatsoever. We had nevertheless had certain apprehensions: How would Fanette react to the sight of her mother Nina being led away? How would Nina feel about leaving her 6-months-old daughter behind? Would Sylvie run into problems in trying to coax her two donkeys through the road tunnel up towards the plateau at Presles? Back here at Gamone, how would my Moshé and his new friend Fanette get along together on their own?
As of yesterday evening, I was delighted to realize that not a single one of those problems had arisen. In other words, everything went off like a charm. Fanette didn't appear to be concerned by the departure of her mother and the other adult donkey. When she returned to Gamone late in the afternoon to pick up her car, Sylvie told me that Nina and Margot had strolled eagerly back up to Presles, and that they didn't seem to be bothered by the idea that little Fanette had remained with Moshé at Gamone. This morning, I took this photo of the donkeys and Fitzroy:
As usual, my two dogs get on marvelously well together. Their relationship remains asymmetrical. As I've pointed out already, Sophia spends most of her time lounging in her big wicker basket on the kitchen floor, whereas Fitzroy is a strictly outside dog, now completely accustomed to the idea of getting into his kennel from time to time.
Preventing Fitzroy from moving inside the house is not even a personal choice of mine. It's rather a survival issue, in the sense that many objects inside the house (furniture, books, clothes, tools, etc) probably wouldn't survive for long if Fitzroy were to get in physical contact with them. Fitzroy's genes are such that he likes to be bossy with recalcitrant beasts such as cattle, sheep and donkeys. So, why would he be unduly worried about tackling a lounge chair, say? Out on the lawn, Fitzroy is fascinated by a permanently running hose from the Gamone spring. He drags it all over the lawn, meaning that puddles spring up every now and again in unexpected corners. He has trouble understanding why he can't simply pick up the water jet in his mouth, as if it were a stick, and dash around with it clenched between his teeth. In attempting to fathom this philosophical mystery, Fitzroy often gets soaked… and he then moves onto the straw in his kennel to dry himself out.
The other evening, on French TV, I watched a fascinating US program on the subject of our prehistoric ancestors. Directed by Graham Townsley, its English title is Becoming Human, and it was made last year. The fact that such a show can be seen in prime time on a Saturday evening (dubbed in French) is yet another tribute to the excellence of French TV. Here's the opening episode:
Well, one of the recurrent themes in this series of documentaries was well expressed in the latest book by Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth. Here are his words:
We've been land animals for about 400 million years, and we've walked on our hind legs for only the last 1 per cent of that time. For 99 per cent of our time on land, we've had a more-or-less horizontal backbone and walked on four legs. We don't know for certain what selective advantages accrued to the individuals who first rose up and walked on their hind legs…
Not so long ago, people used to explain that bipedalism came about because we needed to get up on our hind legs so that we could use our hands for carrying things… but that's surely a case of putting the cart before the horse. We still don't know the complete answer to that question, although both Dawkins (in The Ancestor's Tale) and the Townsley documentaries propose various speculations on this subject. Getting back to my dog Fitzroy, I often have the impression that he might already be working hard, with the help of his mentor Sophia, at evolving into bipedalism.
In this tandem position, when Sophia decides to move forward, Fitzroy is perfectly capable of following her on his hind legs, like a ballet artist. I'm convinced that, soon, he won't need to lean on Sophia's back any longer. He'll simply raise his front paws in the air, as if he were praising the Almighty for the gift of bipedalism, and he'll wander off in an easy upright gait. Maybe I should get in contact with Dawkins and Townsley, to see if they're interested in writing a book or making a movie about Fitzroy. In fact, I suspected, right from the start, that Fitzroy (who'll be 4 months old next Wednesday) was a wonder dog. Maybe I should look into the idea of teaching him to read...
In my article of 2 August 2010 entitled Moshé's future companion[display], I spoke of my intention to acquire a young donkey named Fanette, as soon as she was old enough to be weaned from her mother.
Last Monday was donkey expedition day. Sylvie in Presles (the girl who was responsible for finding me my dog Fitzroy) had agreed by telephone, a fortnight ago, to drive down to Gamone to pick me up at 9.30 so that I could accompany her in the operation of bringing the donkey Fanette down here, along with Fanette's mother Nina and another adult female donkey named Margot. (Sylvie's irregular working hours at the hospital in St Marcellin mean that she has to plan ahead precisely for "leisure-time" activities such as this.)
When I crawled out of bed in the semidarkness, I sensed that this was the first really wintry day of the cold season. I could see snow on the slopes at the end of the valley (my regular "barometer" for approaching winter conditions at Gamone), and a mild blizzard was blowing gusts of freezing rain through the air at Gamone. My first reaction was that this was not a day for creatures such as me to be wandering around out in the open on the mountain slopes. I wondered whether Sylvie might phone to suggest that we should postpone our expedition for a nicer day. But I nevertheless went ahead dressing in warm clothes, because I realized that a young rural woman who has grown up on a farm in the mountains is unlikely to be impressed by a bit of sleet and wind. When Sylvie arrived at exactly 9.30, the first thing I noticed was that her small Renault car carried traces of a layer of snow. And the first thing that she noticed here was the fine kennel I had built for Fitzroy. She was also struck by the fact that Fitzroy's snout had grown amazingly in a Pinocchio fashion since the last time she had seen him (at the start of September). I left Sophia in the kitchen, while Fitzroy remained outside, as usual.
The road up to Presles was bathed in fog. The snow started as soon as we reached the plateau. Sylvie had been sufficiently forward-thinking to install snow tires on her car a few days ago, so she had no trouble in driving to the place where her three donkeys were located. She left the vehicle by the roadside and we trudged through a wind-swept field to the donkeys' paddock. There, I waited in the blizzard while Sylvie disappeared into the mist with a bag of apples and stale bread, calling out to her animals: "Margot, Nina, Fanette…" Fortunately, I was decked out in my long R M Williams oilskin coat (seen here drying).
I was also wearing a woollen bonnet with waterproof lining, rubber boots and leather gloves. It took Sylvie some twenty minutes to locate the three donkeys and lead them back to the wire gate of the enclosure. Then we set out walking in the direction of Choranche. We were particularly worried that the donkeys might refuse to enter the short tunnel on the cliff face, just a hundred meters down the road from the plateau of Presles. In fact, there was so much fog that the donkeys didn't even realize that they were entering a tunnel. So, an hour later, we were down at Gamone.
The three female donkeys moved calmly into Moshé's paddock. Since then, their coexistence with Moshé has been perfectly peaceful.
One of these days (there's no hurry), Sylvie will take her two adult females back to Presles. Between now and then, if all goes well, Moshé and Fanette will have become accustomed to one another.
My donkey Moshé has been upset (disoriented ) by the recent disappearance of his old companion Mandrin.
It's a well-known fact that donkeys don't like to lead a solitary existence, so I immediately started looking around for an animal to keep him company. As of today, I'm happy to have found an ideal solution: a baby female donkey named Fanette who'll be available (that is, weaned) by the middle of October. This afternoon, Fanette's breeder, a young woman from Presles named Sylvie Rozand, introduced me to the beautiful little donkey.
In October, to get Fanette down to Gamone, Sylvie and I plan to walk down the slopes from Presles to Choranche. The road starts with a short but difficult section comprising a tunnel. Normally, donkeys refuse to enter tunnels, just as they refuse to cross streams. Sylvie has done this journey already. She tells me that Margot can be coaxed into entering this tunnel, while Nina and her daughter can be roped up behind and led along by Margot.
Fanette's father is a Provençal donkey owned by my Châtelus neighbor Jean-Marie Huillier (in fact, Sylvie's cousin), whose farm is located just across the Bourne from Gamone. By chance, I've been saying hello to this male donkey for ages, every time I drive across to Châtelus.
After leaving the donkeys, Sylvie invited me for a drink with her parents, in front of their old farmhouse in the village of Presles. My daughter Manya and I have known this couple for ages.
They're natives of Presles and traditional farmers, members of a race that has almost disappeared. Sylvie's companion happens to be a Welshman named William, whom I've not yet met. He's a professional shepherd, stationed for the moment in an Alpine context with a huge flock of sheep. In French, the operation that consists of a shepherd and his dogs leading their flock up to high-altitude pastures for the summer months is referred to as alpage. Then they all come down again to the valley as soon as the first snow appears.
This afternoon, I received an open invitation from William and Sylvie to drive up to spend a couple of days in their Alpine cabin, some three hours away from here by car. I hope I'll be able to accept this invitation, along with my dog Sophia. If so, a surprise awaits us. We'll be returning to Gamone with another companion, for Sophia: a pure-bred Border Collie pup.
