BUYING A HOUSE IN FRANCE - BUY FRENCH PROPERTY - TALES FROM FRANCE 5

Above: Marseille, the view from Notre Dame

Above: Marseille, the port.

THE CREATURE IN THE RIVER

My wife came back from the shop one evening in some excitement saying she had seen an otter in the river. Later we met Madame, our neighbour who speaks no English, and told her about it. To us she will always be Madame even though she has told us her name, it just seems to suit her so well.
Madame immediately rushed off to get a book, (she has a book for every occasion), and from our description finally picked out what she said the animal must be. We then looked in our French English dictionary and were perplexed to discover that my wife had seen a racoon! Either our French is much worse than we feared or Madame knows something about France that has eluded us. I have since seen the creature, and whilst I couldn't swear it was an otter, it is definitely not a racoon.

FERAL CATS IN FRANCE

Not all the animal tales from France are rosy. On one visit to the house in France in the middle of Winter to do some work, the first thing that confronted me on opening the door to Dingly Dell - a dark, damp, enclosed area covered with corrugated iron roofing, outside the back door - was a dead cat. It was one of a number of feral cats that live on the hill behind us that Madame used to feed every day. So my first job was a burial up the garden.
The following Summer we found another one but we didn't notice it for two days as it was underneath a chair and had obviously been there for so long that there was not even a smell - until we moved it that is. When we told Madame she said that that made six altogether and she reckons that one of the neighbours is poisoning them. She has her suspicions as to who it is but is not letting on.
Eventually, there were no more cats left on the hill.
Made a note to ourselves: will never be able to bring our cat with us when we come on holiday to the house in France.

THE FRENCH HEAVY BREATHERS

On another Summer visit to the house in France, I was sitting in Dingly Dell reading a book and having a glass of wine when I became aware of what sounded like somebody breathing heavily and it seemed to be coming from the steps up to the garden. Then I realised that there were two sets of the noise, zut alors! Was it two dastardly French voleurs lurking with intent in the darkness? The noises started rising in volume and pitch until they reached a crescendo and then stopped completely at which point I realised they were animal noises. Presumably they had had a big fight and one had killed the other which was why the noises had stopped. I went up the garden with my torch but could find nothing.
I told my wife about it and the next night when we were both sitting in Dingly Dell the noises started again. Once again I took my torch and had gone up a few steps when I suddenly realised that the noises were coming from the house directly behind me. I turned round and there, peering straight at me from the top of a defunct chimney, was an owl. By going up the steps until we were level with the top of the chimney and watching we were able to establish over the next few nights that there were two youngsters and the breathing noise was made when they were waiting for food. When the parent bird approached they suddenly turned up the volume until they were screeching, and once supper was dropped they took it down inside the chimney and the noise stopped completely. One night the parent bird came gliding in directly over our heads, so near that we could almost have reached up and touched it, dropped its prey to its offspring without landing, and then disappeared into the night. It was a magnificent spectacle.
On another night I heard a double crash as if something had hit the corrugated iron roof of the lean to at the side of the house. When I went out to the street at the front and shone a torch up I illuminated two faces with white hoops round the eyes looking, I thought, rather sheepish. The silly beggers had been fighting and had fallen off the chimney. They managed to scramble back up again though. I tried to take some photographs but couldn't hold the camera steady enough for night shooting so this year I'm going to take a tripod, if I get any clear shots I'll post them here.