Game

Eating anything that moves is claimed to be a character trait that the French inherited from their ancestors, the Gauls. However that may be, it is a fact that they pioneered the consumption of snails and frogs (I use the word ‘pioneered’ advisedly, since more frogs and snails in garlic butter are now consumed, proportionately, by tourists visiting France than by the French themselves). In the days before shooting regulations came in, the French shot at any furry or feathered creature that came into their sights. Birds, particularly thrushes and blackbirds, were encouraged to do precisely that by the berry-laden holly or wild service trees that were planted near farmhouses. In winter Rémy Chabut used to station himself inside what used to be my bam (it is currently being converted into one section of Mourjou’s ‘eco-museum’, the Maison de la Châtaigne), swivel aside the piece of wood that covered a small square aperture he had made in one of the doors, push his gun through and pick off birds alighting on the huge holly tree standing next to the bam. Many years later, his wife Jeanne remembered without a shred of nostalgia how she and a woman friend had once achieved the mammoth task of plucking ninety-five blackbirds he had shot for a banquet.