Fitzroy contemple une plume

Cette plume noire de corbeau est tombée sur Gamone cette nuit.
Comme Léonard de Vinci, mon chien réfléchit au phénomène du vol.

Chien rencontre son cadeau de Noël

Cliquez sur la photo pour l'agrandir

Fitzroy salive de plaisir. Il n'a jamais de sa vie vu un os aussi grand !

C'était une idée de ma conductrice M, qui connait bien les animaux.

Une heure après cette prise de photo, Fitzroy avait reçu son os à côté de sa niche. Et, au cours de la nuit suivante, des monticules ont fait leur apparition tout autour de la niche.

Un jour plus tard, un ami de Pont-en-Royans s'est arrêté à l'entrée de Gamone pour dire Bonjour. Fitzroy, attaché à sa laisse, a dû penser que cet homme est venu pour prendre son trésor, car il est devenu étrangement agressif pendant un moment. Tout s'est calmé rapidement.

Livraison matinale de bois

Comme d’habitude, la première chose à faire est de prendre livraison du bois préparé par Fitzroy.

La situation est totalement surréaliste. J’ai le sentiment que, si je ne reconnaissais pas presque formellement le travail effectué pour moi par mon chien, celui-ci serait déçu. Je prends donc le gros morceau offert par Fitzroy, sans oublier le petit fragment de bois d’allumage faisant partie du lot, et je les amène dans la cuisine, tout en félicitant mon chien. Et Fitzroy donne l’impression de trouver ce petit rituel parfaitement normal.

Par la suite, Fitzroy a visiblement détecté la présence de plusieurs indices (peu nombreux mais suffisants) signalant que son maître va sans doute sortir en voiture cet après-midi avec Martine. Dans sa tête, Fitzroy possède déjà les éléments de base de la journée. Il se repose donc calmement comme un homme qui a tout compris, qui sait exactement ce qui se prépare pour les quelques heures qui viennent.

On appelle ça une vie de chien ? Je dirais plutôt une vie de futurologue.

Bon, ça suffit. Je ne compte tout de même pas raconter régulièrement cette même histoire concernant la vie programmée de mon chien. Ce n'est pas un fait exceptionnel ; c'est simplement un élément de notre existence quotidienne à Gamone.

Question que je me pose depuis toujours

Pourquoi certains animaux intelligents (chiens, singes, etc) ne parlent-ils pas ? Cliquez ici.

J'aime beaucoup cette réponse : Ce n'est pas tellement leur faiblesse cérébrale qui bloque leur capacité potentielle de prononcer des mots. C'est surtout la forme de leur gueule.

Alors, quand est-ce qu'on leur fabriquera des gueules artificielles susceptibles de leur donner la possibilité de s'exprimer vocalement ? Il y a un petit obstacle supplémentaire. Il faudrait que l'on modifie le cerveau de chaque animal destié à parler, pour qu'il sache exactement comment manipuler le gadget artificiel. On n'est donc pas sorti de l'auberge. Difficile, quand on souhaite améliorer la Nature, d'aller plus vite que la musique. Mais tout est théoriquement possible, à condition d'avoir le temps et l'enthousiasme qu'il faut.

Quelle horreur ! Transformer nos adorables chiens en robots japonais... Quant à mon Fitzroy, il lèverait rapidement une patte pour pisser sur le synthétiseur vocal... puis il le réduirait en miettes.

Les agissements nocturnes de Fitzroy sont de la folie

Mais, dans les mots de Shakespeare, cela ne manque pas de méthode. Je parlerais franchement de l'intelligence du type Homo.

Vers la fin de la nuit, à une heure où je suis endormi, Fitzroy entame toujours quelques petites opérations. Il va aller jusqu'au bout de sa chaîne afin de choisir et déplacer certains objets. Des objets précis, pas pris au hasard. Il entre en contact avec des bouts de bois : en réalité, exactement le même genre de bouts de bois que ceux déplacés tous les jours par son maître. Du bois de chauffage pour le poêle.  Ayant constaté que je commence toujours par de petits fragments de sapin pour l'allumage, Fitzroy fait pareil. Sa précision est hallucinante.

 

Cliquez sur la photo pour l'agrandir

Fitzroy est comme un enfant qui tente d'imiter les choses que fait son papa. Le plus étonnant, c'est qu'il réussit très bien. On voit qu'il a dégagé d'abord un fragment de sapin que j'avais découpé effectivement pour l'allumage du poêle. Rien n'est fait de façon aléatoire.

Pour poursuivre logiquement notre vie commune, j'ai signalé verbalement à Fitzroy qu'il faut prendre le morceau de bois d'allumage et l'amener dans la maison. C'était franchement comme si je donnais ces instructions à un être humain.

Notez que mon chien reste attaché pendant toutes ces opérations... sinon il serait capable de courir après un véhicule qui passerait sur le chemin à côté de notre maison.

J'indique clairement enfin, verbalement, que je compte rentrer à l'intérieur de la maison. Fitzroy comprend immédiatement.

Il ne lâche pas un instant le bout de sapin. Nous voilà donc partis ensemble vers la maison.

Notez bien que je ne tire même pas vers la maison, qui se situe à droite de moi, dans l'alignement du museau de Fitzroy. Et nous voilà enfin à l'intérieur de la cuisine. Fitzroy est désormais détaché de la laisse... et il n'a pas encore posé le morceau de sapin.

Pour moi, son maître, cet adorable chien est génial. Il comprend tout. Je tiens à préciser par ailleurs que je lui ai toujours parlé uniquement en langue française... avec une seule exception : le mot "down" (en bas).

Black dog and foam mattress

This story will not be accompanied by any photos, in spite of the fact that I spent about an hour this morning out on the front lawn alongside Fitzroy, and I would have had more than enough time to take photos...  not only of my dog but, above all, of the foam mattress that he had methodically and expertly destroyed in the early hours of the morning.

Up until this morning, I had never imagine that Fitzroy would be determined to perform such a spectacular demolition job. It was carried out with precision, like a great surgical operation. Big chunks of foam were broken into smaller fragments and these were then separated into even smaller fragments, and so on. And all this confetti was spread out over a large area... with the help of morning breezes.

I was totally stunned. I tried to ask my dog a question: "Fitzroy, why did you do that?" But my dog was so exhausted (a consequence of his nocturnal activities) that he didn't have enough energy to provide me with an explanation. So, the mystery remains...

Still learning to master my dog

Some people ramble on for years about the novel they intend to publish, as soon as they find a publisher. I behave in the same way as far as mastering my dog is concerned. I talk about it constantly, and believe that my leap into mastery is just around the corner. But a bright observer (such as my son François) surely realizes that I’m unlikely to ever gain my diploma in dog mastery. It’s simply not in my genes.

For the last week or so, I had finally decided that the cold season is fast approaching us, and that it was time for me to accept the presence of Fitzroy inside the house. There’s no intrinsic dog-mastery problem in such a down-to-earth decision. All I have to do is to tie up Fitzroy outside, during the day, for at least an hour or so, to give him an opportunity of doing his business and having a pee. I repeat: no problem. If the worst came to the worst, and my dog decided to pee somewhere inside the house, in the middle of the night, it still wouldn’t be catastrophic. Besides, that situation would only arise if I went out of my way to give Fitzroy, late in the evening, a big bowl of milk… which would be a silly act for me.

Yesterday evening, Fitzroy was edging around the kitchen door as if he wanted to move out into the balmy night air. I must be careful about opening the door at such times, because my Gamone property is still a victim of disgusting Pyrale moths which dart towards any light that appears in the darkness. Be that as it may, last night, in the darkness, I did in fact make a single foolish mistake. I failed to attach my dog to a lead before letting him race out into the night air. Consequently, in the darkness, I failed to see where he had disappeared… but I soon learned (after a bit of silly shouting) that the Master’s animal was seated snugly in his kennel. (In daring to use the term “Master”, I was trying to crack a joke.) So, I dashed towards him and attached his collar to the chain alongside the kennel. Then I went back quickly inside the house, hoping that I wasn’t being pursued by too many moths. Once inside the lonely house, I watched some fine television, while listening periodically to check that my dog wasn’t barking.

This morning, at 8 o’clock, I was awoken by my clockwork brain. I saw from a window that Fitzroy, during the early hours of the morning, had performed an impressive wood-moving operation, over a distance of some ten metres. I grabbed my Nikon and took this photo of the result:

I have decided for the Nth time that, this evening, I will surely become, at last, an experienced dog-master. We'll see...

Fitzroy is back outside, in the dark

Last night, I was happy to go to sleep with Fitzroy lying on the bedroom floor, in his elegant little sleeping bag, which I had withdrawn from his kennel. The house adventure didn't last for long. This afternoon, Fitzroy made it perfectly clear to me that he did not intend to repeat the in-house procedure. I have my house, and Fitzroy has his... his own little private residence. And there's no sense in trying to combine them. It's amazing that a dog can get this complex message across in a perfectly clear manner, without the slightest word.

There's a wonderful story about a talking donkey, the friend of a little boy. The child wants to demonstrate the donkey's extraordinary talents to people in the village, but the animal refrains from uttering a single word. Afterwards, when the village people have stopped making fun of the child, and they've all gone home, the boy asks the donkey: "Why did you refuse to speak in front of the village people?" The animal explains: "I don't like to speak with all those dull folk, who wouldn't understand me. They bore me. I only take pleasure in rambling on with you."

I often feel that Fitzroy is a bit like that donkey. One of these days, my dog will inform me that he doesn't mind listening to my voice, but that the things he might say to me are so extraordinary that a fellow like me simply wouldn't understand.

Autumn at Gamone

The piles of brown leaves at Gamone have fallen, not from my lovely old linden trees, but from a couple of maple giants. A few years ago, I thought of cutting down these trees, for I'm afraid at times that they could be blown over towards the house. But it's probably preferable to let them live.

Click to enlarge slightly

The next photo shows my apple tree, which has provided me with small fruit this year.

Fitzroy has found a tiny apple, which he is keenly inspecting.

These apples are tender and sweet, and free of insects and worms.

Linden leaves blown mysteriously into my house

At Gamone, three big linden trees are located in front of the house, and their dead leaves form a brown carpet, appreciated by Fitzroy.

The dry leaves are light, and they're scattered by the slightest breeze. I've been intrigued to find leaves inside my house, even though I usually close the front door. I imagined that brief gusts of wind carried leaves into the kitchen whenever I opened the door. But there's another explanation...

 

Fitzroy's bushy tail works like a vacuum cleaner.

Where did Hannibal cross the Alps?

If only my smart dog Fitzroy had been around in 218 BC, I'm sure he would have figured out rapidly the exact itinerary chosen by Hannibal to cross the Alps and move into Italy. Fitzroy would have simply sniffed around for a while until he determined with accuracy the places where there were traces of horse dung and elephant piss, and he would have known immediately where Hannibal had traveled.

These days, scholars are still trying to solve this problem, and they are using scientific instruments to sniff at ancient specimens of animal dejections. Click here to access an article by Chris Allen, an environmental microbiologist at Queen's University Belfast, who reveals how microbial evidence has located dung left by Hannibal's horses when they were moving across the mountains.

[ I find it hard to believe that this kind of pseudo-scientific historical research is indeed serious. I'm not exactly proud to admit that I tend to be biased by the fact that the research in question has been conducted by would-be Alpine specialists from Northern Ireland. ]

The exact spot where Hannibal crossed the Alps is thought to be the treacherous Col de Traversette, seen here:

In the following map of the section of the Alps between France and Italy, the red blob indicates the location of the Col de Traversette:

Click to enlarge slightly

In the lower left-hand corner of this map, you can find a tiny village named Risoul. That's the Alpine birthplace of my dog Fitzroy, which lies just a whiff to the west of the spot where Hannibal and his animals scrambled over the Col de Traversette. It goes without saying that, if the Irish fellow Chris Allen wanted to call upon help from a local specialist to locate traces of archaic elephant piss and horse dung, I'm sure that my dog Fitzroy would be thrilled to participate in such an excursion... particularly if it's a chance to get involved in ancient history.

Fitzroy has received a pharmaceutical gift in the mail: a luxurious beauty product

Emmanuelle sent him this gift from Paris. But Fitzroy hasn't yet discovered the contents (not, of course, meant to be consumed).

It's a high-quality shampoo. Emmanuelle assures me that this product should be able to eradicate the nasty smell of a dead wild boar, which has been encompassing my dog for the last fortnight.

When my dog leaves home for an hour or so, I never know what kind of a life he's leading

Up until a year ago, the favorite destination of my dog Fitzroy was a farm-house over in Chatelus, on the other side of the Bourne: the residence of his female lover. But, over the last year, I've noticed a significant change in Fitzroy's behavior. He has developed the habit of racing to the crest of the hill behind Gamone, and disappearing for an hour or so. But I've never been able to determine the destination of his excursions. So, this mystery remained unsolved... up until today.

A fortnight ago, as soon as I let Fitzroy off his chain so that he would come inside the house, he set off immediately to the crest of the hill behind my house. When he returned home, an hour or so later, he had a nasty smell. Since then, it has been too wet and cold to give him a bath. Consequently, I've been obliged to get accustomed to living with the nasty smell. Yesterday, when Tineke and Serge visited me, they were immediately conscious of my dog's disgusting smell, and they preferred that I leave him chained up outside, alongside his kennel. Tineke insisted upon the probability that Fitzroy had in fact been rolling around on the corpse of a dead animal. And I agree... although I've probably grown accustomed to living with this horrible smell.

When Martine arrived this afternoon, I warned her not to touch Fitzroy, because he was surely carrying traces of a dead animal. Through her job as postwoman, Martine is aware of everything that's happening in Choranche. She started to inform me that one of my closest neighbors, René, has an unusual pet: a wild boar that lives on the property like a domesticated animal. One day, the boar went out into the woods and became pregnant. It returned home with a litter of half-a-dozen piglets, and René started to feed them. Unfortunately, a fortnight ago, one of the little piglets appears to have died.

Hearing that tale, I immediately obtained a likely explanation of Fitzroy's escapades. For my dog, René's property is no more than a jog of 5 minutes up along the crest of the hill behind Gamone. Fitzroy has surely been racing up there often, to play with René's dog and the litter of wild boars. So, the mystery of Fitzroy's frequent escapades has a logical explanation. Likewise, Fitzroy's dirty smell is almost certainly the odor of a dead piglet.

Since putting together those explanations, which are quite logical, I'm less annoyed by the nasty smell.

Old school photos

On chilly winter evenings, my dog Fitzroy loves to sit down in front of the computer (not surprisingly, he’s a Macintosh addict) and browse through old school photos of his master.

Click to enlarge

In case you didn’t recognize us, that’s Fitzroy’s head in the lower left-hand corner of the screen, and me in the upper right-hand corner of the school photo.

Luxuriant flames

Here at Gamone, it would be an exaggeration to claim that it’s cold… unless, of course, you were to go wandering around on the slopes—Aussie style at this time of the year—dressed in a T-shirt, shorts and thongs. I prefer to be wrapped up constantly, day and night, in garments made out of the fabulous textile known as polar fleece. I believe that the latest stuff I purchased (through the Internet) is made out of recycled plastic bottles.

Meanwhile, I burn a lot of wood, non-stop, almost day and night. Sure, it’s a luxury, but Fitzroy and I lose no sleep fretting about the idea that we might be privileged rural dwellers. I’m too preoccupied by the tasks of cleaning up the stove every morning, and carting in a new supply of firewood. Then I think of nothing more than warming up my toes, while my dog (often in my lap) likes to combine the warmth of my body with the heat hitting his backside. It’s all very calculated, almost scientific.

Utter luxury (in which I’ve never yet indulged) would consist of lighting up simultaneously the closed fireplace at the other end of the living room. I’ll do this (I promise) if one or other of our children—or maybe even me—were to decide to organize, say, a marriage reception here at Gamone in the midst of winter... and if it were truly cold enough, of course, to justify all the flames. In fact, I’m so enchanted by that luxurious idea of utter flaming warmth in my living room that I really must start looking around for a bride. Or maybe my dog might reveal his secret nuptial plans.

De-extinction

The awkward term “de-extinction” designates the idea of recreating a living organism that had become extinct. This idea gives rise to two quite different questions:

• First, of course, it’s a matter of deciding how to attempt to perform such a de-extinction operation, at a purely technological level.

• Second, there’s the question of the ethical implications of such an act. In other words: Would we have a right, morally and socially, to perform such-and-such a de-extinction operation?

The de-extinction of dinosaurs would appear to be a failure at both levels. So, you should feel free to go ahead with plans for a nice wedding, say, with no fear of unexpected interruptions.

Things get somewhat more complicated when we envisage the de-extinction of Neanderthals.

Let’s suppose that we did in fact succeed in carrying out a successful de-extinction operation. What would you then do with such a fellow? It would be unwise to let him wander around freely as if he were a normal citizen of the world, because he would surely run into trouble, for countless obvious reasons. You could always try to get him adopted by a nice family of well-off God-fearing American Republicans. Or maybe you might think about packing him off to an outback cattle station in Australia to work as a jackeroo. But, as Donald Rumsfeld put it, there would be certain unknown unknowns… including the ugly idea that our Neanderthal friend might be enticed into becoming a militant in a jihadist organization.

The de-extinction of a woolly mammoth would appear to be a far more reasonable project.

On the one hand, with the help of modern elephants, the operation is probably feasible, and there would be room enough in the wilderness of lands such as Canada or Siberia to organize an ideal home-place for the resurrected creature, and maybe create a family environment.

In my native Australia, there are two fascinating candidates for de-extinction. The first is an amazing creature that was last seen as recently as 1985: the Gastric brooding frog.

Its mode of reproduction was really weird. The female swallows her fertilized eggs and then uses her stomach as a womb, finally giving birth to baby frogs through her mouth (as you can see in the above photo).

The other perfect candidate for de-extinction is the Thylacine, or Tasmanian Tiger, which became extinct in 1936.

An Australian scientist, Mike Archer, has made a brilliant presentation of the case for de-extinction of these two creatures. Click here to watch his fascinating talk on this subject. At one point in his talk, Archer presents an old-timer who led him to his bush hut which used to be visited by Tasmanian tigers. And he introduces the marvelous theme of maybe keeping these animals as pets. Personally, I almost broke into tears of emotion when I heard Mike Archer making his case for this aspect of a de-extinction project. I looked fondly at this painting of a Thylacine and her pup:

And I said to myself that, since my dog Fitzroy has now developed the regular habit of sleeping inside the house, his charming old kennel is free to receive a guest.

So, if ever Mike Archer were looking for a nice place to house one of his future Thylacine pups, Fitzroy and I would be more than happy to receive such an adorable creature at Gamone. As for the idea of also accepting the Neanderthal fellow, to look after the tiger pup, I’m prepared to look into the question… but I would probably prefer a Neanderthal maiden who wouldn’t mind combining her Thylacine-care activities with housekeeping work at Gamone.

Artistic dog

My dog Fitzroy continues to demonstrate his tastes in sculptural forms. These days, I have a large stock of high-quality firewood in the shelter alongside the house, and this includes a big pile of wood chips. Well, yesterday, I was surprised to see Fitzroy pounce onto the top of this pile of wood chips, and start burrowing with his muzzle. I imagined that he’d spotted a mouse. However, as he moved away from the firewood shelter, Fitzroy held no mouse in his jaws. There was merely an unusually-shaped piece of wood, which I promptly photographed.

As you can see, it’s a fragment of beech wood comprising an old knot. I would imagine that Fitzroy was attracted by the delightful combination of shapes, hues and textures. As I said, my dog has a highly-developed artistic taste. And we can use the word “taste” quite literally. We humans admire beautiful objects by merely looking at them. But Fitzroy goes one step further, and sets about finding what they taste like.

In any case, I’m convinced that my dog is talented in the world of forms and colors. If only my neighbor Tineke Bot were to decide to organize sculpture classes, I would immediately enrol Fitzroy.

I often meet up with references to Fitzroy’s birthplace, Risoul, in the French Alps. The other day, it was mentioned as one of the less expensive ski stations in France.

I like to think that Fitzroy's artistic sensitivity stems from the fact that he was born in such a magnificent place... but I realize that this is not good thinking. Here are photos I took of Fitzroy with his mother and family members at Risoul, just over four years ago:

Click to enlarge

I’ve put a circle around Fitzroy, in the background, with his head leaning against the stone step.

The two pups had been stalking that poor hen, strolling quietly just behind it, following it in every direction, and driving the hen crazy. Finally the mother of the dogs intervened, enabling the hen to escape.

Here is my very first vision of Fitzroy staring straight into my eyes.

Since then, he’s been doing that constantly, many times every day, for the last four years. For me, that penetrating gaze is the symbol of Fitzroy’s presence in my life.

Dogs can use mathematical algorithms

I’ve always suspected that Fitzroy might be a mathematician or some kind of a computing wizard… who doesn’t necessarily go out of his way to boast about his talents.

A fascinating article on the theory of so-called shepherding has just appeared in the Interface journal of Britain’s Royal Society.

Click to enlarge

Researchers succeeded in building a model that simulates correctly the way in which a dog herds up sheep. Click here to access the article. To understand the article, which is quite readable, you need to replace the term “shepherd” by “dog”, and the term “agent” by “sheep”.

Most of us (at least in Australia and the UK) have seen demonstrations of smart dogs herding sheep. Here at Gamone, in the past, I’ve tried to herd a dozen or so sheep with the help of my two children, but without a smart dog. It turns out to be difficult, if not impossible, for the simple reason that humans can’t possibly run after stray sheep at the speed of a dog. But what exactly takes place in a dog’s brain when it succeeds in moving a flock of sheep from one place to another?

A basic assumption made by the researchers is that a stray sheep, located beyond the main outside perimeter of the flock, sees the dog as a would-be predator, and it “escapes” from this “predator” by moving back into the midst of the flock. In the model imagined by the researchers, a dog is thought of as engaging, at any particular moment, in one or other of two operations:

— A collecting operation takes place when the dog rushes out beyond the perimeter of the flock to round up the sheep that has strayed the furthest distance from the flock.

— A driving operation takes place whenever there is momentarily no immediate need for collecting, enabling the dog to get behind the flock and drive it towards the destination, which we can call the pen.

The following graph shows the way in which phases of collecting and driving take place, one after the other, until the flock has assembled, as desired by the dog, down in the lowest left-hand corner.

Now, once the theoretical model was created, the researchers were able to validate it by calling upon a genuine sheep dog and a flock of genuine sheep, down in Australia. The dog they chose for the experiment was an Australian Kelpie, which has the extraordinary habit of jumping up onto the backs of the sheep in order to obtain a bird’s-eye view of the global situation, so that it can locate the most distant stray sheep. The following excellent photo (by Martin Pot) illustrates this behavior:

In fact, the algorithm used by the dog to carry out its herding assignment is relatively simple, and it should be an easy matter to create a robot capable of performing this task. I can hear Fitzroy laughing. Like me, he’s trying to imagine a robot capable of racing through the weeds on the slopes of Gamone, jumping over fallen tree trunks, and biting the hind legs of recalcitrant ewes to get them moving in the right direction…

POST SCRIPTUM
I'm amused by the idea of an Australian Kelpie strutting across the backs of the sheep as if they were a nice soft pathway. I'm wondering whether the dog developed this technique on its own (unlikely in my opinion) or whether the grazier trained the dog to do so. I'm reminded of the experimental situation known as the monkey & bananas problem, which used to be a favorite with artificial-intelligence theorists. If you were to put a hungry monkey in a room where a bunch of bananas was hanging, but just out of reach, would the monkey be smart enough to drag a box-like object beneath the bananas so that he could climb up and attain the bananas? I introduced a variant in which there were two monkeys. Would one of them be smart enough to climb up onto the back of the other monkey in order to be able to reach the bananas? I believe that the answer to these questions is no... unless you train the monkeys to behave like the Kelpie.

Punishment for sins

To punish people who have been led astray by sins of the flesh, God invented venereal diseases. And today, ever abreast of state-of-the-art medical science, He has updated His punishment to AIDS.

In the case of dogs, God simply invented fleas. Late yesterday evening, I wandered out into the balmy darkness for a pleasant breath of fresh air before going to bed. (To be more honest, for a pee.) My dog Fitzroy followed me out… then he promptly shot off into the night, as if he were on an urgent mission. When it became obvious that my dog wasn’t planning on returning home in the near future (a most unusual situation), I left the light on in front of the house and went to bed. Early this morning, Fitzroy was back home, in a rather scruffy state… no doubt after a night of fornication in a farmyard somewhere up on the mountain slopes in the vicinity of Presles. To restore his energy, he gulped down a dish of croquettes. Then I left him chained up outside (which he doesn’t mind at all) so that he could doze on the grass in the sunshine.

He has spent much of the day scratching himself, which suggests that he received a massive gift of fleas from his lady friend. This afternoon, I gave him a dose of the expensive Frontline Combo product (to destroy flea eggs, and repel ticks) and covered him in flea powder.

When I was a youth, young heterosexual males were in constant fear of catching “the Clap”, which was the slang term for gonorrhea. A lesser evil was the nasty creature known as the crab louse, which seemed to be keen on pubic hair.

An unskilled observer might well imagine that the canine version of this pubic-hair crab beast is the flea, but my zoology is probably faulty.

In any case, God made Himself perfectly clear. The only sound remedy for all these evils is Abstinence. I must try to get that divine message through to Fitzroy.

Another baby donkey at Gamone

For a long time, Moshé (who’s over 20 years old) was the only donkey at Gamone. Today, on the contrary, he has no less than seven donkey companions. But he retains his independent character. Here’s a photo of him striding up the hill, brushing flies away with his tail, and using his ears as a kind of rear-view mirror.

The latest birth, a week ago, was a female.

Her name is Violette. The mother is Bella, and the father (a Provençal donkey, like Moshé) is Barnabé (French version of the biblical “Barnabas”). Here are the three of them, posing for a family portrait in front of my archaic shed:

There’s an opening in the fence between Jacky’s property and mine, so the donkeys can roam freely between the two. Here are some of them in my walnut paddock:

The presence of all these donkeys has cleaned up considerably the weeds on my land. This is an advantage for my dog Fitzroy, above all. When he dashes out on a tempestuous excursion aimed at reminding the donkeys that he's the boss at Gamone (a dozen times a day), Fitzroy no longer returns to the house covered in prickly burs, as was the case up until now. But don't imagine that my dog would ever get around to thanking the donkeys for that service.