November 11 commemorations - and the lonesome boar

There's a certain ambivalence among the French as to how they honour those who died in World War One.

On Tuesday, there were the very official ceremonies, with the French president, François Hollande, leading the commemorations by unveiling a new WW1 memorial, "l’Anneau de la Mémoire" ("Ring of Remembrance") next to the Notre-Dame-de-Lorette military cemetery in northern France.

François Hollande at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette (screenshot BFM TV report)

L'Anneau de la Mémoire inauguré - Le 11/11/2014 à 07h00

Up and down the country, there were similar services to remember those who had fought and died in WW1.

But that didn't mean the whole of the country came to a standstill.

Far from it.

For many, it was simply yet another public holiday - and a pretty long one at that.

With November 11 falling on a Tuesday, plenty took the opportunity to extend the usual  weekend into a four-day break.

Others, of course, had to work.

The usual services - transport, emergency and local supermarkets (yep, the country's - somewhat erratic - shop opening hours might be at the centre of a debate at the moment, but clearly there were still those who needed to pop out for groceries) for example.

And for international bankers (oh, what a shame) it was business as usual because the markets were open in many other countries.

Meanwhile, if you happened to be in rural France, you could well have been in for a very special treat.

The weather was mild - at least in the southwest of the country - and ideal for a pleasant stroll in, for example, the forest of Sivens (in the news recently for the death of 21-year-old Rémi Fraisse, a protester at the controversial dam project) in the département of Tarn.

Accompanying you on your walk, would have been the blood-curdling howls of hounds as they ripped through the woods and spilled out on to the roads, chasing their prey a dozen or so kilometres across the countryside and into the fields surrounding the picturesque village of Castelnau de Montmiral.

Yes, the hunt was on with some locals seemingly intent on paying tribute in their own special way...letting out the dogs, allowing them to rampage, and saluting the memory of those who had died by opening fire on their quarry - a lonesome boar.

How very appropriate for November 11.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No...it's a boar - loose in a shopping centre

Imagine you mosey on down to the local shopping centre for a spot of retail therapy, and while you're there, casually minding your own business, all hell breaks loose as an unexpected and certainly uninvited visitor puts in an appearance - a boar.

The boar in the hairdressers (screenshot from France 2 television report)

For shoppers at a mall in the eastern French town of Frouard near the city of Nancy last week, that was exactly what happened.

Mid-afternoon last Tuesday the animal - reportedly weighing in at around 60 kilogrammes - caused panic among shoppers as it made its way along the aisles of a supermarket for several minutes.

"We were about to evacuate the store but the animal thankfully left without harming anyone," Grégory Gobin, the head of security, told TF1 news.

It then made its way to a nearby hairdressers whose clientele quickly fled allowing security guards to close the doors and lock the animal inside.

"It ripped apart the salon, climbed into the basins and was clearly distressed," Gobin said.

And an amateur video shows how the boar panicked in a scene that was surely as pathetic - in the true sense of the word - as much as it was comical of a wild animal trapped and terrified.

A vet was able to tranquilise the animal before it caused any more damage and it was removed and later destroyed.

France's boar population has risen rapidly in recent years. Statistics released in 2008 put their number at more than one million, compared with 250,000 in 1998.

A nationwide scheme was launched in 2009 to try to keep their numbers in check by increasing the number of hunting licences issued.

Hunters turn rescuers as they save a man's life

Hunters often get what some might consider something of a bad rap here in France where the activity is, in many rural parts of the country, undeniably something of an institution.

If they're not "accidentally" killing the wrong animal such as Cannelle the bear then hunters might well be inadvertently shooting each other.

Not surprising perhaps as with over 1,350,000 registered hunters, France has by far the largest number of any European country with only Spain (almost one million), the United Kingdom (800,000) and Italy (750,000) coming close.

So it's good to come across a hunting story that entails saving a life rather than taking one - be it intentionally or by mistake.

On Saturday a party of hunters in the southwestern French département of Tarn became "saviours" rather than "destroyers" when they rescued a man.

Arifat cascade (screenshot from YouTube video)

The group from the village of Arifat had gathered in the forest to hunt deer but instead, according to the regional daily newspaper La Dépêche du Midi, heard cries of pain.

They were coming from a 39-year-old man

"He was groaning and lying on his back when I found him," the president of the club, Christian Valéry, told the newspaper.

"He told me he had fallen eight metres from a nearby cliff as he had been taking photographs of animals and hadn't been able to move for two days."

The hunters immediately switched mode and became rescuers as some of them went off to contact the emergency services - there was no mobile 'phone reception in the forest - while the others remained with the injured man.

He had broken his leg and pelvis and was suffering from hypothermia and dehydration after at spending two nights out in the open with temperatures dropping to minus 10.

It was, as one of the hunters said, a miracle that the man was discovered as the accident occurred in a remote part of the forest pretty much in the "middle of nowhere".

A slice of life in France - a hunting tale

November 6, 2009

Ah yes, it's hard not to mention it but living in France, and especially outside any of the metropolitan areas, means facing the passion many in rural areas still seem to have for la chasse.

France is after all a country in which values of the countryside and family are still promoted and hunting, it would appear, remains an integral part of rural life.

It's perhaps ironic that given the grand debate launched this week by the immigration minister, Eric Besson, on "national values and identity" that a story so quintessentially "French" or at least representative of "life in the country" hardly caused a stir in the media.

All right, so it dates back to 2007, but is nonetheless highly topical and although perhaps only "small" in stature, from an outsider's point of view it illustrates a part at least of what "being French" is about.

Last week an appeals court in the southwestern city of Toulouse upheld a ruling made last year against Jérôme Lagarrigue.

In November 2007, Lagarrigue, who was responsible for a pack of hunting dogs, pursued a stag right into the home of Peter and Patricia Rossard (and their children) and killed it in their kitchen.

You can see a photo of the slaughtered animal here - attention it isn't for those with a weak stomach.

The couple took him to court for trespassing on private property and endangering the lives of others, and a year later he was found guilty, fined €1,000, ordered to pay a similar amount in compensation to the couple and had his licence to lead a pack of dogs revoked for two years.

But Lagarrigue, with the support of a local branch of a hunting organisation, l'association de la vénerie nationale et la fédération de chasse du Tarn, appealed the decision, insisting that killing the animal - even on private property - had been an act of hunting.

Now whatever you might think about the rights or wrongs of hunting, the case surely illustrates a part at least of what rural life in France is like.

Maybe what shouldn't be so astonishing for those living here is the fact that although the original court hearing the case handed down a judgement, the hunter saw fit to appeal and had support in his defence.

After all let's not forget France is a country in which there's even a political party Chasse, Pêche, Nature, Traditions, (Hunting, Fishing, Nature, Tradition, CPNT) which since it was founded in 1989 has fielded candidates in two presidential elections and whose very aim is to "defend the traditional values of rural France."

Although CPNT doesn't currently have any representatives in the National Assembly or the European parliament, back in the 1999 elections to the latter it won six seats.

An anecdote related recently to me from a couple looking to buy a property in the very same part of France in which the stag in this story met its end, included words of wisdom they had received while house hunting and once again it goes some way to demonstrating how much hunting remains an important component of rural life.

The vendors of a house in which they were interested told them that if they were serious about giving up city life and starting over in the country they would have to "learn the ways of the locals".

"When you eventually buy a house with some land, don't post 'no hunting on this property' signs all over the place even if you are against it,'" they were advised.

"Try to reach a friendly understanding' with the locals as to how you felt about hunting and they would probably leave you alone."

Probably but not definitely as the Rossards discovered.

"Crocodile Dundee" needed in France

Hunting is still a pretty popular pastime in France, at least in rural parts of the country.

There's even a political party, Chasse, Pêche, Nature, Traditions (Hunting, Fishing, Nature, Tradition, CPNT) which fielded candidates in the recent European parliamentary elections and whose leader, Frédéric Nihous, stood in the presidential election back in 2007, winning over 400,000 votes nationwide.

Deer, foxes, boars, rabbits, hares and birds are all fair game for what many still consider to be a "sport".

But this week in the village of Xertigny in the eastern department of Vosges, the hunt has been on for quite a different kind of creature - a crocodile.

It was apparently first spotted by an 82-year old man last weekend, but not wanting to be thought to be a little doolally by the rest of the folk in the area he reportedly kept quiet about what he thought he had seen.

Since then though, several other people stepped forward to say they too had seen it and the local authorities began to take the sightings seriously.

A plan has been put in place to try to capture the beast with a trap being set up in a large pond on the outskirts of the village.

The services of the fire brigade, police and officials from l'Office de la chasse et de la faune sauvage were also called upon, and according to reports in the local press they were within two metres of the animal on Wednesday morning as it lay on the banks of the pond.

But then it did what crocodiles supposedly do best, slipped into the water and disappeared out of sight.

So the beast, measuring around 1.5 metres in length is still on the loose

And local officials are now thinking about calling in a specialist team from the nearby city of Metz to try to help them out in their attempts to catch the reptile alive and have it transported to a crocodile farm almost 400 kilometres away in Pierrelatte in southeastern France or have it killed.

At this point you might be wondering how the crocodile came to be on the loose in the first place.

Well for the moment that remains a mystery, although a local farmer is reported to have seen a van around two weeks ago on the banks of the pond where the croc "could have been thrown into the water".