Wednesday 15 August 2012

Wild Boars Don't Jump


We are city people so it seems strange to be writing about boar habits. When you are lucky enough to have a place in the Tuscan countryside, however, you have to learn about them. Bear with me for a brief boar lesson. I will try not to bore
you.

Wild boars, part of the pig family, are plentiful in this part of the world. In the fall, when hunting season begins, their numbers fall dramatically as the cacciatore (hunters) shoot them and take them home for dinner. Cinghiale (wild boar) is historically an important part of the Tuscan diet and remains so today. It shows up as sausage, salami, ragu sauce. How does it taste? Like pork, but gamier.


For several years we had a boar problem at our place. Never seen during the day, they used to invade our property at night. On occasion we thought we heard boar snorts outside our window. If accused of snoring, we had an alibi: "It wasn't me. It must have been a boar."


These creatures are geniuses at sniffing out food sources, and they dig ferociously for roots, tearing up the grass in the process. Ivo, who works the property, was tearing out his hair with frustration as he seeded and re-seeded the lawn. We had been opposed to a fence, but we finally relented. It was either that or lose Ivo.


He constructed a fence of almost-invisible wire around all the places a boar might enter. I asked him why he didn't bring it further up the hill, to include a ledge. "Cinghiali non saltare" (boars don't jump), he explained.


We have encountered a boar on a few occasions, always at night, and thankfully while in a car. It is dangerous to be between a mother boar and her offspring, so we were nervous when we saw a baby boar wandering on the dirt track leading to our place. Fortunately, it moved off the road before the mother could ram our Fiat Panda.


On another evening, as we drove down the winding road to the local village, a boar the size of a cow leapt in front of the car and appeared to JUMP up the hill on the other side of the road. Our daughter Alyssa called it the Famous Tuscan Jumping Boar. You haven't heard of it?


We haven't seen it since, but sometimes at night we think we hear a boar snort close to the house, inside the fence. 


Or maybe it is just someone snoring inside the house.