French Letter: Errant pigs turn our garden into a bomb site

I had just returned from Rennes, where, at last, I had had a crown successfully fitted, and was parking the car when I heard the dogs next door going bananas. What had spooked them? I wondered. They are German and normally quite well behaved. 

It was then that I identified the cause of the ruckus – two large pigs snuffling in our back garden, next to the fence between us and our new neighbours. One of them was huge and mottled, with slime dripping from his snout. The other was smaller, a female, possibly pregnant. 

I approached with caution. As a city boy, I am not at home with large animals. It could even be said that I am pig-ignorant. “Shoo!” I shouted. “Allez!” But they were having none of it. My bon-mots were as pearls before swine. They were much more concerned with ripping up our lawn, gouging great holes in search of, what? – mushrooms, truffles? Whatever it was, they were committed to the task, grunting as they went, causing the dogs on the other side of the fence to go mad with rage and indignation. 

I should say at once that at the scrag end of winter our garden is far from being a showpiece. My planned first cut of the grass was still a couple of weeks off, and in advance of the spring the flowerbeds boast mainly weeds. But the two porkers were wreaking havoc.

I approached the boar, about the size and shape of a barrel, gesturing to him that he really had to leave. He ignored me. Indeed, he thrust his snout at me and began to nuzzle at my knees, causing me to retreat up the steps of the terrasse. 

It was at this point that Louisa, my wife – from New York via Boston and equally lacking in rural cred – took charge, remonstrating with the interlopers, who, again, took no notice, obliging her to join me in the safety of the terrasse. It was at this point that the lead pig began to chew at the step leading up to what had become our redoubt.  

What to do? We knew where the pigs had come from. A group of squatters has occupied a vacant field up the hill behind us for the last three months. They live in a kind of tent rigged up on the back of a lorry and keep dogs and chickens as well as pigs. The gendarmes have spoken with them twice in recent days – not least on the subject of drugs – but it is beginning to look as if nothing can be done. 

Bertie, our German neighbour, formerly a customs officer, is much vexed by the behaviour of the squatters, whose dogs like to bark in the middle of the night, setting off his two Alsatians. Minutes later, as the pigs tired of taunting us, he and another neighbour, half my age, appeared to take command of the situation, herding the recalcitrant beasts back up the hill to where their owners, as is usually the case, were not to be found. 

This morning, the vandals came back, this time with two piglets trotting behind, and set about our garden with a vengeance. It was as if someone with a grudge against us had thrown grenades onto our land. Appalled, I telephoned the mayor, who assured me gravely that the gendarmes had been informed and were on their way. 

They have yet to arrive. In the meantime, as I poked ineffectually at the pigs with a stick that I take with me on country walks, help arrived in the form of a young man who just happened to be passing in his car, along with his wife and children, when he caught sight of the miscreant porkers who for reasons of their own had decided to leave our garden and make for the road. 

Between us, we managed to guide the four animals back up the hill, to the edge of the field whence they came, noticing along the way the astonishing amount of damage they had caused to the verges. The young man in question turned out not to be a local. He was in fact from Reunion, one of France’s five overseas departments, a volcanic island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. He had come back to the land of his ancestors, he said, because he couldn’t stand the heat.

“You need to speak to the owners of these pigs,” he told me. “They are obviously starving.” 

Sadly, the squatters are only there when it suits them and there was nobody there except for the chickens. We now live in dread that the porcine foursome will return. Bertie says that if they should stray again onto his land when his two large dogs are off the leash, he will not be responsible for the consequences. But what does the mayor intend to do about it? And when will the gendarmes put in an appearance? Our daffodils are in bud and about to bloom. I don’t fancy their chances if the Hog family gets wind of them. Maybe [Lord help me], it’s time to call in the Chasse. 

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