Moderate wimpishness

It’s been a while since we’ve seen boar round here. Last year, or was it two years ago, we even met a bunch of hunters who  said that there weren’t as many as there once were. I can’t see the hunters having much impact on the boar population so presume they just got bored and perhaps nipped off to france or something. Anyway it seems they’re back.

I’ve been sleeping out a bit recently and being a lazy sod (I like sleeping out, don’t like the discomfort) I’ve been kipping on the sun lounger out on the patio. Last night the dog occupied the sun lounger instead of me and comfortable and warm and safe she just kept barking. For ages.  You always know when she’s barking at boar because that is just what she does, barks at them but won’t, sensibly I think, go near them. When boar  get too near her though she growls,  so as soon as I heard her barks punctuated with growls I quickly grabbed a torch and opened the back door to take a look and bugger me if there weren’t a bunch of them 4 or 5 yards away. I counted five but judging by the noise from those that had already passed me there were a lot more. I don’t know if I’m happy about this or not. From a wildlife point of view I am. I like the idea of boar. From a solitary wanderer of woods point of view, less so. Especially if they’ve started going around in large groups again as was the norm when we were in the old house.

They passed on up the field behind the house and started rooting about and making one hell of a noise in the top field so I grabbed a torch and challenged myself (a bit like with lightning) to man up and go say hello. Well to be honest I first went up on the roof so I could get a good look at how many there were. Lots I think is a fair description. Big is another fair description. Then armed with two torches (no way is some ornery boar bitch going to get the better of me again in the dark. If I’m going to get charged again I want to see the gory details) I leapt off the roof  poleaxed-gazelle like and steeling myself to see how courageous I was or am, went up into our late veggie plot 20 yards or so from the rooting piggy hordes and then flooded them with  light. The lound rooting noises all stopped suddenly, which was not nice, there was a tense silence (on my part) , one of them came to the wall to investigate and while it just stood there the rest just simply carried on where they had left off.  At that point I must confess I lost my bottle and retreated generally accepting of and content to be a wimp. Well in my defense it’s not a nice feeling to be noticed by a freaking great boar while you're unarmed in the pitch black with only a couple of head torches for defense. So trainee-wimp then.

Tabatha is ill today so didn’t get a chance to go up and see the damage they did so I can savour that tomorrow. Poor Tabi, tomorrow was her birthday party and today was the general rehursal for her ice show. She’s an elf. Bed today, bed tomorrow. Poor kid.