Wild Boar 1 Hunters 0

Hey! Are you there? I thought you were. Sorry, I'm in such a tearing hurry I'm forgetting my manners! I hope you all had a great Christmas with lots of everything - edible and otherwise. Happy New year too!

My name is Gaspard and I am a wild boar. Yes, that's right, a wild boar, son of two wild boars and brother to three others. We live in a cave way up in the mountains. In the winter it snows a lot up here and it can be very cold. We don't mind as we are used to it. In fact, mountains covered with snow are very pretty. We eat leaves, small shrubs and roots of all kinds. Roots are probably our favourites. Delicious! But, when the ground is covered with snow our problem is finding food. You can scrape away with your hooves for all you are worth and, when we are all together there are a lot of hooves at our disposal, but you don't find much.

This particular winter was a bad one. It seemed as though it had been snowing for weeks. The cold had frozen the snow so that it was rock hard. We scraped away as best we could but there wasn't much to find, the odd bit of bush and one or two roots we'd somehow missed before and that was about it. Our dad had taken to starting out earlier and earlier and went further and further afield to try to find some food for us. Our mum got more and more worried as we got thinner and thinner. It was what could be described as a dodgy situation. As so often happens a further complication added to our problems. Hunters!

Down in the valley below us we spotted a group of hunters. They had everything hunters imagine they need. Green outfits to blend with the vegetation, except at the moment due to the snow they stood out like sore thumbs and were easy to spot. They had a pack of dogs, who unlike us appeared to be well fed, and guns, lots of them. Not good news as they were after us. We had one big advantage over them, born and bred in these mountains we knew the terrain like the backs of our hooves. We decided to move further up. If we kept above them we could keep an eye on them. We moved as quickly as we could.

The hunters set off in groups of two and three and scoured the valley. They looked for anything that could be called game. They do not like to go home empty handed! All this activity went on for a long time, until suddenly they all called to each other and re-grouped just below us. Time for lunch! They emptied back packs filled with food. Our mouths watered. They uncorked bottles of wine and settlede down to a feast. They ate and drank while our stomachs rumbled as we watched. It was very hard.

They were still eating when our dad looked up at the sky above the mountains. Huge snow-filled clouds were forming and drifting towards us. He smiled. Slowly and softly the snow started to fall.

The hunters knew that they had to get back down the valley as fast as they could before they got
lost in what was rapidly becoming a snow storm. They took to their heels, dogs and all, leaving the remains of their lunch behind. As they disappeared we came running down from our hiding place and ate all that was left of the food. Some of it was suitable for us, some probably not but,when you are really hungry, who cares?!

Copyright Jacqueline Hastings 2010