No room at the Elysée for France's wannabe "presidential cow"

It hasn't been a particularly good week for the French president François Hollande.

Well certainly not as far as potential presidential pets are concerned.

First up of course there was the bellowing camel offered to him by grateful Malians, and then reports that it had been stolen and wouldn't after all be making its way to France.

Now comes the tale of a cow that has - in a manner of speaking - been refused entry to the lawns of the French president's official residence, the Elysée palace.

It's seems representatives from the Association des éleveurs bovins or Cattle breeding association (somehow the French seems more...er...poetic) wanted to show their...um...appreciation of the French president ahead of this year's Salon d'Agriculture which opens in Paris on February 23.

What better way, they must have thought, than to offer him his own cow?

After all, there aren't any other pets at the presidential pad right now.

François Hollande at Salon d'Agriculture, 2012 (screenshot France Télévisions report)

Well, while Hollande was in Brussels cutting a budget deal with the other leaders of the European Union, it was left up to officials at the Elysée palace to break the bad news to the association, that no, they wouldn't be allowed to hand over the beast in person.

Instead, they'll just have to hope that Hollande pops in to pay them a visit during the agricultural fair.

All a bit of a shame really because, as you can see from the video, Hollande was up close and personal with cows during his marathon 12-hour visit to the annual fair last year.

Heck he even helped give one of them a shower.

There again, he was in campaigning mode.

Moo!

Incomplete animal faction - French cows want "Mariage pour tous"

It might seem that the French president, François Hollande, is blowing hot and cold in his support for same-sex marriage, but the country's cows are clear where they stand.

The official organisation representing both France's dairy and beef herds has issued a statement demanding that the draft legislation dubbed "Mariage pour tous" or "Marriage for everyone" be taken literally and be extended to allow cows to tie the knot.

La Normande (from Wikipedia)

Speaking from her pasture in northwestern France, the president of "Oh la vache!", Marguerite la Normande, told reporters that the current proposals were clearly discriminatory.

"At the last count there were more than 3.5 million dairy cows in France alone and everyone knows that we constitute a vital part of the rural economy," she said.

"It's just not fair that the debate so far has centred on marriage between two men or two women. What about us? We also have feelings," she continued.

"And we have the means to protest and get our point across," she added.

"Just imagine the effect it would have, for example, on cheese production, if we up-uddered tomorrow and refused to be milked."

La Normande's "Oh la vache!" has already had what she describes as "moo-ving support" from several government ministers, but there has not yet been any official response from the Elysée palace.

That might be down to the fact that Hollande is still busy trying to work out what he meant when he told the national mayors’ conference earlier this week that the country's locally-elected mayors would have "freedom of conscience" to decide whether to perform marriage ceremonies and then appeared to do a U-turn the following day,

But if the French president has been slow to react, the same cannot be said for groups opposed to "Mariage pour tous".

"It's this sort of threat that the Archbishop of Lyon, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, warned against last month," said a spokesman for the movement Civitas, well-known for its objective and humanistic opinions on all social matters.

"The very basis upon which French society is built is in danger if the proposals for same-sex marriage become law," he continued.

"Cardinal Barbarin said it was one step on the road to legalising incest and polygamy - in fact the very destruction of all our principles and morals. And here's the proof now, with cows also wanting to marry. Never!"

La Normande, who has personal reasons for feeling so strongly about the issue, hopes that her organisation will be able to persuade the French president to introduce a new clause into the draft proposals, although she admits she doesn't have a great deal of faith in Hollande sticking to his initial election promise, let alone meeting her demands.

"He's a man who seems to enjoy chewing the cud almost as much as I do, and never actually making up his mind," she said.

"Still I remain hopeful he'll take on board how important this issue is to the French bovine population and take into account our own person feelings," she continued.

"I've been engaged to a bull at a neighbouring farm for over a year. He already has the ring in his nose and I'm just waiting for him to be able to put it on my hoof."

Moo!

"CHEESE" - it's the annual Salon d'Agriculture...and election year

Watching the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, making his way around the annual Salon d'Agriculture in Paris on Saturday was more than just a little surreal.

Salon d'Agriculture (screenshot TF1 news)

Surrounded by a heaving scrum of journalists armed with microphones and cameras, Sarkozy spent over four hours at the show in his official capacity but, this being an election year, much more was riding on his presence and of course his behaviour.

Few will forget his now infamous 2008 visit to the show and the "Casse toi, pauvre con" mark he left on it.



And, on several occasions since, he has not exactly endeared himself to France's farmers with some of his comments.

He's also a devout towny - born and bred - who, according to political journalist Michaël Darmon, has always insisted that when he has been zapping around the country in his official capacity, he manages to avoid, in so far as possible, staying overnight in "the provinces".

But Darmon says Sarkozy's advisors have done their work and he also seems to have realised the importance of appearing to be a friend of the country's farmers, to such an extent that a recent opinion poll showed him to be well ahead in their voting intentions.

Farmers may have apparently been won over, but does anybody else really believe that Sarkozy actually enjoys nibbling on the smelliest of cheeses, watching cows being milked or having to pat a handsome horse?

Nicolas Sarkozy at the Salon d'Agriculture (screenshot TF1 news)

Somehow it just all seems to be too contrived and so very far from the obvious enjoyment displayed by his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, who always appeared to be at ease taking a healthy swig of whatever was pressed into his hand or tucking in to regional produce.

Still, four hours of pressing the flesh and proving to the French electorate that he is every much a child of rural France as the next man or woman is an essential part of Sarkozy's road to re-election.

And it's one all the other candidates will have to endure or enjoy if they wish to replace him at the Elysée palace.

The day after Sarkozy's visit, it was the turn of François Bayrou, leader of the centrist Mouvement démocrate (Democratic Movement, MoDem) party and there was no real difficulty for the "son of a farming family" as he is always eager to point out.

Once again Bayrou appeared to be in his element

Tuesday should be more "interesting" though as the Socialist party candidate François Hollande has promised to spend a marathon 10 hours at the show.

That's an awful lot of cheese!

Yvonne, Germany's runaway cow, is safe and happy

After three months "on the run" Yvonne - Germany's "fugitive" cow - is safe and happily reunited with her son and sister and enjoying a new life at an animal sanctuary in southern Germany.

Yvonne, Germany's runaway cow (screenshot from Guardian website)

Yvonne's story is one that has captured the imagination of both the German and international media over the past couple of months ever since she, in the words of NPR, "Darted to freedom just as she was about to be sent to the slaughterhouse."

After 98 days on the run, she has finally been captured.

Actually, to be absolutely precise and, in spite of all the attempts German authorities have made to find her, Yvonne "gave herself up" when she wandered into the meadow of a farmer last week.

Yes, a silly summer story with a happy ending.




Yvonne, a six-year-old dairy cow, first hit the headlines back in May when broke through an electric fence of a farm in the village of Zangberg, 80 kilometres northeast of Munich.

She had been due to be sent for slaughter.

Her exact whereabouts remained a mystery for the next three months although she was believed to be "in hiding" somewhere in a nearby forest.

At one point she was spotted crossing a road, almost colliding with a police car, which led to the local authority giving hunters the go-ahead to shoot on sight because she was reportedly a potential threat to traffic.

It was an order they later overturned after animal rights groups protested and the national daily tabloid Bild Zeitung took up her cause.

The paper offered a €10,000 reward for anyone who could find her, and kept the story alive with regular updates.

The Gut Aiderbichl animal sanctuary also stepped in, stumping up €700 to buy Yvonne from her former owners and taking the lead in the search to find her; and it resorted to some extraordinary measures.

They included enlisting the help of her sister Waltraut, who had also made a dash for freedom when Yvonne disappeared but had later returned, to lure her out of hiding.

And the services of Ernst, the so-called "George Clooney of bulls" to woo her home with his "deep baritone moo".

Ernst the bull (screenshot from ZDF news report)

They also called upon the "skills" of an animal communications expert from Switzerland, Franziska Matti, to tempt Yvonne to return.

But as Matti said after she had "spoken" to the cow (telepathically of course) "Yvonne was not ready to come out of hiding" and even though "she knew that Ernst had been waiting for her she was scared and thought that humans would lock her up and she would no longer be free."

Huh!



Yvonne remained elusive - until last week that is when she wandered on to a meadow of farmer Karl Gutmann to join the rest of his grazing herd.

He informed the Gut Aiderbichl animal sanctuary who confirmed it was Yvonne by her ear tag.

Gutmann claimed his reward and Yvonne headed off to spend the rest of her days with her son Friesi and her sister at the animal sanctuary in the southern Bavarian town of Deggendorf.

But, even though Gut Aiderbichl says on its website that she has arrived safe and sound and is settling in, it wasn't exactly been an easy job loading her on to the transporter.

True to her reputation apparently, she struggled and even pushed over the vet who was trying to tranquilise her.

Cows "trash" French cemetery

The image of cows grazing quietly in the field is surely one of those simple delights of the countryside - be it in France or anywhere else for that matter.

But in the northern French village of Radinghem those gentle creatures decided to go walkabouts last Thursday in search of pastures new.

Unfortunately, as the regional newspaper La Voix du Nord reports, for their owner and the local villagers the 33-strong herd ended up in the village cemetery which, not being enclosed in any way, offered them easy access.

That's where the herd spent the night, and not just chewing the cud.

Instead cows being cows they managed to wreak their own kind of bovine havoc, damaging graves stones, knocking over ornaments and generally causing a mess that left more than a dozen final resting places "trashed".

The following morning Michaël Baheux, the village mayor, after having been informed what had happened, closed the cemetery, put a clean-up campaign into action, contacted some of the families concerned and had photo's taken of the mess so that insurance claims could be made against the owner.

A stonemason has apparently also been contacted to give quotes for repairs.

Proof perhaps that village life, although generally more sedate, can also have its moments.

Moo!

image from Wikipedia, author Daniel Schwen