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Don't get me wrong, we love animals and the natural world within which we try to play our part as best we can. We realize how little we actually know about it and are often surprised by its wondrous ramifications - I can't believe that I got 'A'level Zoology at school, anyway we are all for saving the planet.
Be that as it may....
Take this invasion of moles (les taupes) for instance, their molehills multiply daily on the strip of grass bank along the canal-side that we call our own - why did they choose us, one asks?....
I counted ten hills this morning - alongside Body & Soul (see picture) - and that doesn't include the piles of earth that I have already cleared up yesterday and the day before. The molehills provide ideal soil for an outside toilet facility for cats - another example of inter-animalia(l) mutual aid. (symbiosis?)
With a powerful combination of advisors - Prince William, Sir David Attenborough, Google and Wikipedia - to help me, I hasten to do research which deserves the gratitude of posterity and partly to paint a picture of how we fit in to it all - or not - as we float in happy retirement at Evran, on this muddy old canalized river, called L'Ille et Rance - in Brittany - For moles again, click here
But here's another thing; learning from our previous successful experience with 'fat balls' and bird seed for tits and the rest, we have brought our 'hanging' bird table, from our previous mooring at Tinteniac, expecting similar success in Port Evran - so far without much luck. There don't seem to be many 'thin tits' flying about here. The same fat balls are turning black and the bird seeds remain UN-pecked. It is true that we are surrounded by mature hazel nut trees - after all, who needs smelly fat balls when deliciously fresh hazel nuts cover the ground beneath?
Our front path with molehills and hazel nuts.
No we don't; but "fish" feature highly in our diet and on Lucie's shopping lists.
Last week, one of the many canal fishermen, who spend hours at this noble pastime on either side of the canal, caught a large pike (un brochet)- about 10lbs - just off the stern of Body & Soul. I offered him untold riches in order to acquire this tasty beast for eating (for recipe click here), but apparently French custom requires fishermen to put their catch back in the water alive and, after what seemed to be far too long, this pike was indeed allowed to slip away surprisingly unharmed. It is certainly comforting to know that fresh water fish thrive in muddy canal waters; just like French people can drink cloudy beer - Surprising, but 'Enuff sed'!
Did you know?
A pike can eat a prey item up to half its own body weight, even taking moorhens or young ducks. (Maybe that's why we don't have many mallards (ducks) here in Evran! ed.). Because of its size and predatory nature there are many stories about very large pike. The largest specimen caught in the UK so far was found in 1992 in a lake in Wales: it weighed in at just over 21kg - over a third of the weight of an average British woman. Larger fish have been caught abroad and there are stories of huge pike possibly weighing up to 42kg.
We also see Cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo) regularly feeding in the port which is a good sign of healthy waters. For obvious reasons, fishermen don't like them... but we do... seeing them almost daily, flying, diving for fish and swimming almost within touching distance from our poop deck. It is a real treat. We especially love to see them hanging out their wings to dry in the sun; so unlike any other water fowl.