French Fried: one man's move to France with too many animals and an identity thief

by Chris Dolley

  When Gally followed a week later – his back legs having seized up after a particularly nasty bite – our vigilance bordered on obsession.

  We slept with the windows open, ears programmed to react to the first yowl of battle.

  And anything remotely similar.

  Sometimes it was a cow, sometimes a bird, sometimes a bandy-legged cicada with a strange stuttering chirrup. The variety of weird nocturnal noises in the French countryside is truly vast – especially when you’re wide awake and really concentrating.

  But sometimes it was the real thing. And we’d spend an anxious half an hour accounting for all our cats and often as not trying to talk one of them down from a tree.

  Anyone who has ever had to rescue a cat from a tree knows that co-operation from the animal in question is non-existent. And anyone who has ever climbed a tree would also confirm that a dressing gown and slippers are not recommended climbing attire.

  And a puppy is no help whatsoever.

  I wasn’t sure how much more I could take. A decent night’s sleep became a distant memory, and the words, ’Cat Fight’, a nightly scream. I lost count of the number of times I found myself dragged from sleep and deposited somewhere between the bed and the window, not really knowing why or what I was supposed to be doing other than running somewhere and defending something small and furry.

  We tried keeping the cats in at night but that didn’t work as no one thought of informing Shelagh’s subconscious. She’d wake up screaming ’Cat Fight!’ I’d hit the ceiling and various articles of furniture and then we’d have a slow descent into reality.

  Made even slower by the all-encompassing darkness and the leg-encompassing jaws of our faithful puppy.

  Our one consolation were the words of our vet. It would soon be over, he told us. In the spring, cats fight. It’s the season for it.

  I hoped someone would tell Shelagh’s subconscious.

  oOo

  The cats were not the first of our menagerie to visit the vet. That honour had fallen to Gypsy within the first week. We hadn’t been able to have her vaccinated in England due to the export regulations – no vaccinations were allowed in the month prior to embarkation – so she was overdue.

  The cats made the most of it, sitting on the patio making little needle signs with their paws as Gypsy passed by, her nose pressed against the inside of the car window. Cats can be cruel. Especially to impressionable puppies.

  Once in Aurignac, we dragged Gypsy into the waiting room. I think she could smell the warning signs as soon as we approached the vet’s – years of panicked animals having marked the surrounding area. But once inside, Gypsy settled down and apart from the odd verse of nervous singing she was fine.

  Unlike Shelagh, who can’t be left alone in a vet’s waiting room – not when there are leaflets and posters about animal diseases to be worried over. She spent a good five minutes in front of a map of France showing the number of rabies cases by département. And mentally crossing off a large chunk of north-eastern France from our list of places to visit. Next came the leaflets – tastefully arranged on a long coffee table in order of skin-crawl, with everything you never wanted to know about fleas, tapeworms, ticks and roundworms.

  The tick leaflet was Shelagh’s favourite. I’m not sure how many times the picture on the front had been magnified but this tick looked like a minor asteroid with skin problems. And it carried an infection – pyroplasm – which was endemic in France, especially South-West France, and fatal for dogs.

  This was something not mentioned in any literature we’d ever read on living in France. And we’d read a considerable amount. By the time it was our turn to see the vet, Shelagh was ready to pack up and return to England.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about pyroplasm?” she hissed.

  “I’d never heard about it!”

  “Hmm.”

  It was a ‘hmm’ I recognised, a ‘hmm’ that signified that judgement had been suspended and, unless I wanted to suffer a similar fate, I’d better hope the vet comes up with some conciliatory words. Preferably along the lines of, ‘pyroplasm, pas de problème.’

  I dragged Gypsy along the tiled floor into the surgery – it’s a wise vet who keeps his floor well greased – and Shelagh followed behind clutching her tick leaflet.

  The vet was a small grey-haired man with a white coat and a ready smile. And a profound love of animals. We talked for a while about Gypsy’s pedigree. At least, we tried. Even though his ‘little of English’ turned out to be a good deal greater than our peu de Français, we couldn’t quite explain what a lurcher was. In hindsight, we should have passed her off as a greyhound. We were all happy with greyhound – it’s the same word in English and French. But we made the mistake of striving for accuracy and explaining how Gypsy was a deerhound greyhound cross. I toyed with the idea about adding my suspicion that she was also part crocodile but thought better of it – we were having enough trouble trying to find the French for deerhound.

  We tried lévrier de cerf, a chimera of our own invention; lévrier being the name of a Gypsy look-alike we’d seen on a poster on the waiting room wall and cerf being French for stag.

  The vet stared at us blankly. Lévrier de cerf?

  We tried a different approach. Lurchers were hunting dogs. Chien de chasse? Hunting for the pot? The traditional dog of the Gypsies?

  The vet shook his head.

  Shelagh was about to give up but I was a person who knew the French for Gypsy – I’d looked it up in case anyone ever asked what Gypsy’s name meant. Here was my first opportunity to use it.

  Unfortunately Gitane is probably more famous as a brand of cigarette than as French for Gypsy. And my attempted explanation that she was le chien de chasse pour les Gitanes, probably gave the impression that the English countryside was awash with dogs specially bred to hunt cigarettes.

  A little French is a dangerous thing.

  oOo

  The vaccination over, Shelagh turned the conversation quickly towards pyroplasm. Yes, it was a problem, he told us, but there was a vaccination. Unfortunately, Gypsy was too young. We’d have to bring her back in May when she’d be old enough. In the meantime we could spray her, there was a produit that you could apply every month that gave some protection.

  And we’d have to spray Rhiannon, as horses could catch it as well.

  Leaving the surgery, we didn’t know what to think. Was pyroplasm such a killer? And yet dogs were so common, most farms seemed to have at least four. Did they spray them regularly? Were they vaccinated? We greatly doubted it. But to read the literature you couldn’t imagine a stray dog surviving in the wild for more than a few months.

  We decided to investigate further.

  Over the next few weeks, we introduced pyroplasm casually into every conversation we could, hoping to hear comforting words like – it’s not a serious problem, you can spray if you like but we never have.

  Instead we heard about dead pets and dogs saved from death by last minute ministrations from the vet.

  We couldn’t find a dog owner who hadn’t had first-hand experience.

  Shelagh’s first, second and third thoughts were to leave for England immediately. She’d had enough. If she’d known that she was endangering her animals by moving to France she’d never have come.

  That gradually gave way to a ban on Gypsy’s walks into long grass, woods or any other suspected tick haunt. And the pyroplasm leaflet became bedtime reading – ideal material to keep you awake while awaiting an imminent cat fight.

  In early April, the worst happened. Presumably, having survived the cat fighting season, we were due for our next test. And what a test it was. Gypsy wouldn’t eat her dinner, wasn’t interested in biting my leg and decided to spend the day crashed out on her beanbag.

  Out came the thermometer. And then in went the thermometer. Even that didn’t seem to bring Gypsy out of her lethargy.

  Her temperature was over 40°C, way above normal. And her eyes and gums were pale and anaemic
– Shelagh knew all the symptoms of pyroplasm off by heart by that time.

  She called the vet and made the appointment before thinking the next stage through. How were we going to get to the vet? In early April we were still waiting for the papers to come through for our car, to drive it would be illegal.

  But there are laws and there are laws. And untaxed driving was not one recognised by the provisional council of the Kennel Club when an animal’s life was in danger. And I greatly suspected that murdering one’s husband if he objected was viewed as justifiable homicide – if not obligatory.

  So, I drove into town, trying to exude a law-abiding aura while deep down feeling like an axe-murderer with a trunk full of severed heads. Every car on the road screamed – unmarked police car – every person – detective on stakeout!

  Once in Aurignac, I thought I’d find an unobtrusive parking slot – maybe sandwiched in between two large lorries or buried in someone’s back garden beneath a pile of leaves.

  But Shelagh would have none of it. We’d park as close to the vet’s as we could. Gypsy was too weak to walk far.

  The surgery was packed. I began to think that our half past six rendez-vous was more of an invitation to a general surgery than an appointment. The waiting room was full of sorry looking dogs. Including one that looked like a small bear – it was that big and hairy. And so ill. As were they all. I can’t remember ever being in a room full of so many quiet dogs. They were sprawled everywhere, panting, lethargic, not caring if the dog on their left was looking at them funny – no singing, no barking, no sniffing.

  We waited an hour and a half – watching Gypsy all the time, looking for signs of deterioration, hoping we weren’t too late.

  And hoping the gendarmes weren’t on traffic patrol that evening. I could feel our car standing out from all its neighbours, flashing “arrest me!” at every passing motorist. And drawing every eye to the bare patch of windscreen where the tax disc should have been.

  At eight o’clock a police siren wailed in the distance and I was up and running. If I got to the car quick, I could move it into a side street.

  I ran outside. The siren came closer. I tried a fast nonchalant walk, my hands digging into my pockets, searching for the car keys. Was there time to move the car or should I ignore it and walk past? Deny all knowledge of the car, Shelagh and Gypsy and sprint off home across the fields?

  That sounded like a good plan.

  Luckily the police car swept past before I made it to the first maize field. They weren’t looking for me. I could relax.

  Which was when I noticed the abundance of chairs on the pavement. They hadn’t been there earlier. But now Aurignac’s High Street was alive with people sitting outside their homes, chatting to each other across the street, hailing passers by, pointing out the axe murderer’s getaway car with the missing tax disc...

  It was an unusual sight and one which I was to become used to over the summer months. I don’t know what it says about French television but it does appear to be a rural custom to sit outside your home for a couple of hours in the evening.

  I still find it strange. My experience has always been that, given the choice between the front and the back garden, the English invariably choose the privacy of the back garden. And I’ve never seen people ignore the garden altogether and bring their furniture out onto the pavement. But here they did.

  I walked back to the surgery, weaving between the chairs and exuding a law-abiding nonchalance. I’m English, we always run screaming from the vet’s on Thursdays – it’s a tradition.

  Back inside the vet’s, we waited, the room gradually emptying as sad bundles of hair were dragged one by one into the surgery. It was gone nine before a very tired vet waved us through for our turn. It didn’t look like he’d had a break since lunch.

  A diagnosis confirmed a few minutes later when a woman pushed open the surgery door and marched in. It was the vet’s wife. In dressing gown and slippers.

  You did not need to be fluent in French to understand the gist of her questioning. When are you coming home? Do you know what time it is? Do you realise that dinner has been ready for hours?

  He did. And, honour satisfied, she left.

  At least we were his last case. He’d had fifteen cases of pyroplasm that day. And expected the same tomorrow. That was on top of his usual workload.

  Apparently it was the season for pyroplasm.

  And Gypsy had definitely got it. He stepped back from the microscope and invited us to see for ourselves, pointing out the pear shaped blotches invading Gypsy’s red blood cells which gave pyroplasm it’s name – pyro meaning pear.

  But we’d caught it in time. Gypsy would survive. Two huge injections later she was being lifted down from the surgery table. But she’d have to come back in three days time, just in case.

  oOo

  Tick checks were intensified after that. We couldn’t keep Gypsy out of the long grass entirely but at least we could check her coat when she came back. And our jeans – ticks, apparently, being quite partial to denim.

  And we turned more and more towards the roads for our daily dog walks. At least tarmac was safe from ticks.

  But not from dogs.

  The average French farmhouse, we found, is garrisoned by four dogs. The first of which is typically a terrier – or some other small and fiery breed – whose job it is to race outside at the first hint of an intruder and raise the alarm.

  Usually they take one look at Gypsy, gauge her size, and then retreat behind the advancing second wave; who are either border collies or various hunting breeds – spaniels, setters and assorted flop-eared hounds. Their job is to hold the intruder at bay until the arrival of the ultimate deterrent – the gardien de vache – who always lumbers in last due to its enormous bulk.

  And probably because it takes a while to put all its weight-training equipment away.

  The gardien is always of indeterminate breed – normally a cross between a small cow and the Hound of the Baskervilles. And its job is to protect the herd – against anything from a pack of wild dogs to a couple of German panzer divisions.

  We usually hasten our step at that point and look the other way. Hoping that an English couple and their dog are hardly worth bothering with.

  It was coming back from one of these late morning walks one day when Shelagh noticed Rhiannon rolling in her paddock and pawing at the ground. She recognised the symptoms immediately. Colic!

  It was Rhiannon’s turn to meet the vet.

  He arrived within the hour, examined her for a few minutes and pronounced in almost perfect English, “it’s zer wind.”

  “Yes, colic.” we agreed.

  “Non, wind,” he insisted.

  “Colic?” I repeated, trying a different pronunciation this time, making it rhyme somewhat tunefully with eek.

  “Oui, Colique. Mais ... zer wind.” And he emphasised his point by pursing his lips and blowing.

  The wind? We were confused. What had the wind got to do with anything?

  But we should have realised. Any country that has a wind that can turn people mad – strange but true: ’the Mistral drove me mad’ has been used successfully in a French court to escape imprisonment in a murder trial – can certainly find room for one that gives horses colic.

  We listened, amazed. There was a wind, he told us, a very rare wind, that when it blew off the Mediterranean, it left horses writhing in its wake. He’d had several cases already that morning.

  Shelagh cast a look in my direction. It was a look of blame. Not only had I been hiding all the articles on pyroplasm but I’d neglected to mention the wind they called Horsekiller.

  And, of course, we couldn’t have anything as simple as a mere colic-inducing wind sweeping over our fields. We had to have complications. Rhiannon had a strange rash on her shoulder. Was that anything to do with this wind? We’d never noticed a rash associated with colic before.

  It’s one of the disadvantages of our keyword method of translation that occasi
onally you hear something only too well – like the phrase ’ten foot long caterpillar’ – and whatever words you pad the rest of the sentence with, nothing can produce anything you’d like to hear.

  I looked at Shelagh, had I misheard?

  I hadn’t. I could tell by the mouthed, “ten foot long caterpillar?” that she’d arrived at the same translation.

  Then the vet pointed at a fir tree behind us.

  “Là,” he said.

  When someone introduces a ten-foot long caterpillar into the conversation and then points at a tree above your head, you do not take that action lightly. Nor do you stand underneath said tree for long.

  We leapt.

  I could feel the imminent grip of the ten-foot long killer insect as it reached down from its lair in the trees. But I tried to disguise my panic by mutating the scream in my throat into a strangled cough.

  Safely standing behind the vet, we looked back towards the tree.

  It must have been an invisible ten-foot long caterpillar.

  “Where is it?”

  “Là ... zer nest.”

  I could see several balls of white filament dotted amongst the branches. Were they nests? Surely they were too small to accommodate the arboreal cousin of the Loch Ness monster?

  “Processionnaire,” he continued, struggling in a mixture of French and English. “Many chenille.”

  The dictionary was quickly consulted. Apparently it was not one ten foot long caterpillar but a ten foot long line of processionary caterpillars joined head to tail, contact with which could cause skin irritations.

  And of all the places to roll when struck with colic, Rhiannon had chosen the one piece of ground currently being traversed by a ten-foot long string of orange and black hairy beasties.

  Luckily it wasn’t serious. Except for the caterpillars – who suffer far more than skin irritation when brought into unexpected contact with half a ton of horse.

  oOo

  Rhiannon was not having much luck on the horse-riding front either. When we first asked about horse-riding in France we were told there was no problem, you could go anywhere. France was a haven for the horse.