JUST DRONING
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Life in rural France by the editor W
ell, we have been experiencing a bit of a heat wave (canicule) haven’t we! I must say, having had a few skin cancers already I am very wary of being in the sun during certain hours and, given that the temperatures were approaching, if not going over, 40°C I found myself entombed in a shuttered office with the air con going full blast. However, one evening I did venture out to a local bar where, thanks to (so I have heard) new rules about maintaining a certain temperature range in outdoor seating areas, I found myself sat under a wonderfully cooling misting system.
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It was great but, actually, turned up a bit too high. I arrived looking reasonably okay, sat there like a lettuce in a supermarket, and left looking like I had spent a month in a rain forest. Talk about a dripping wreck, but the sun soon brought my curls back, albeit in a less than orderly fashion (mental note, should I buy a plastic poncho for next time – I think not!) I learned a thing or two about chickens this month too! So what came first, the chicken or the egg? It has to be the chicken surely. Having spent a lifetime thinking I was eating something that could have become a cute chick, I had no idea but it seems that not
all eggs are fertile. Daddy cockerel delivers his donation via a cloacal kiss and fertilises the egg of the day, continuing to fertilise eggs for a week or so after the romantic encounter. Like all mums, she knows what is what and which is which and instinctively knows which ones to sit on. What a cracking revelation that was and who knew hens were so clever! Back to the question though, the eggs need a cockerel to lay fertilised eggs so, unless the cockerel laid them in the first place (err no..), it had to be the chicken – didn’t it? Remember the tale of the disappearing car keys in the last issue? I must thank a
reader who wrote to say that the pic we had used was just all wrong. So please accept our apologies. It seems that the image was of Australian magpies and, as she said, they couldn’t have flown that far. Sadly the photo library we used hadn’t made the distinction but we have let them know. Since then, I have heard about many local people losing rings and small garden items in exactly the same way. The French, or maybe it’s just Lot et Garonne magpies, are obviously very good at their fabled hobby. Well they can buzz off. Until next time ….
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