La Vie en Foussais is a record of the trials and tribulations of us, the Barley family, as we make a new life for ourselves here in the Vendée region of western France.
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Wow, less than three full glasses of wine and I'm slightly giddy. I must be getting old. [view on Twitter >>]
I have said before how much we enjoy the wildlife around us here. We are literally surrounded by birds and beasts of all variety and we love it.
However, there are some new creatures in the neighbourhood who are causing a bit of a stir….two owls.
At first we thought there was just one, but last night we saw both of them together. They fly around the square of our hamlet hopping from the telegraph pole to the fence-post to the roof and back again.
We viewed them with a certain fascination and wonder at first. How lucky we are to have such beautiful birds living so close. But it seems the new neighbours are getting quite settled and are claiming the territory as their own….much to the annoyance of Charlie and Lola (our cats)!
The owls are now taking to sitting on their loft perch and screeching at the top of their voices at the cats below. And the poor kitties, being such soft creatures, are scared out of their wits and come running inside!
Here’s a video of one of the hoodlums. Its a little shaky as I didn’t have time to grab the tripod.
Anyone know what kind of owl it is? And how to persuade it to make friends with Charlie and Lola?
We love the way they come and sit on your knee at night for a sleep.
We love the way they are pleased to see us when we come home after a day out.
We even love the way they wait outside our bedroom door in a morning to say hello.
But one thing we certainly don’t love is the constant stream of mostly-dead animals they insist on bringing in to play with!
It started with just one lizard. “That’s okay”, we thought, “we can cope with that”.
Then one day we returned from a day at the beach to find the living room full of feathers. Yes, they had brought in a starling to play with and stashed it under the settee when they heard us come back home.
Lola then started coming home with what looked very much like pieces of another cat’s tail. Quite how she got those we do not know.
Then came the first mouse. I was on the phone when the cats in the other room suddenly went quiet. Worrying. A quick investigation revealed Charlie tossing the poor creature around the room. I managed to wrestle the mouse from his mouth and fling it over the fence, much to his annoyance. It was only later in the day, when the cats were sniffing around the bottom of the settee, that we realised that the mouse had actually left it’s head behind! Argh!
A series of lizards were next in line for the treatment, inlcuding one live one who really didn’t want to be picked up and rescued!
Then, while I was away in England, I had a call from Lisa. Charlie had brought in the biggest prize yet – a rat! She was shaking. Luckily the rat was dead and she managed to scoop it up with the dust-pan and dump it outside, though Charlie put up a good fight for it. I was impressed with Lisa’s bravery, but not impressed with Charlie’s increasing appetite.
And so it continues. Today saw another dead lizard and a dead mouse join the list of casualties. What are we to do? I know it’s great that they catch rats and mice, but does anyone have a suggestion about how to stop them bringing the corpses into the house? All ideas gratefully received!
There has been much a bit of excitement at our house over the last couple of months due to the arrival of a Hoopoe. The hoopoe is a rather odd-looking bird, one that we had never seen before as they rarely venture up to england. They do migrate up to europe at nesting time though, so we were rather delighted when we first spotted him pecking around outside out house, looking for worms.
We have only ever spotted him a couple of times, although we have heard him more often thanks to his “woop-woop-woop” call. When I first heard it I thought it was an alarm clock going off somewhere in the house! After hunting high and low, I discovered him sitting on next-door’s roof. Sadly, by the time I got the video ready, he had flown off
Well, this morning he returned and, thanks to our shiny new camcorder, I managed to capture him in close-up. I apologies now as this was first thing in the morning so the camera-work is a bit shaky, and everyone was eating breakfast with the TV on, so it’s a bit noisy. But I’m glad we managed to get some close-ups of this guy as he really is quite a special bird.
