Babyhood

Last week when out walking with Patricia and her big hairy dog, we had three surprises of a zoological kind. Firstly the dog ran off into a field and started barking and threatening a small furry animal. When we got close enough we could see it was a beaver! The poor creature got thrown about a bit before Patricia pulled the dog off, but we could see it had huge, red-stained teeth (from gnawing on mahogany perhaps?!), so it could have given the dog a very nasty bite.

We continued along the path and I nearly stepped on a bright red object, and gasped when I saw it was a live écrevisse', or fresh-water prawn! It was quite small and the poor thing was nearly bent over backwards like a scorpion, in an attempt to scare me off. We were quite far from the nearest lake, so we were amazed it had apparently walked such a distance. Or perhaps a bird had fished it our of the lake and then dropped it while flying off.

About 10 minutes later we came across a second écrevisse', so we said that if we saw anymore we would regret not having collected them for lunch! The funny thing was that the stupid dog didn’t hesitate to attack the beaver despite those frightening teeth, and yet he wouldn’t go near the little prawns.