Conservation and the Fauna

As I have already said, it is in June and September that one can see the Savoie at its best. But the good weather in the fall can last to the end of November. This is when the best sights for photographs just happen. There is always valley fog at this late date, and as one climbs out of it snowy summits framed by the green and gold branches of spruce and larch slowly unveil or abruptly appear.

It is also the good time for hunting. I remember fondly going hunting with a classmate and her grandfather. The gentleman had dreamed of shooting a grand tétras (a gorgeous ptarmigan) and took us two girls along, positively keeping us in unnerving religious silence the whole day. We drove for hours in a cold car to reach a certain forest reputed to be full of ptarmigans, and we waited from much too late morning till almost late afternoon, for nothing. We heard the bird; Porthos the golden retriever sniffed it without being able to flush it; the tétras remained elusive. Around four o’clock Grandfather unloaded his gun, whistled for his dog, gathered his two little girls, and as we were crossing a path to go home the grand tétras literally flew into our faces, narrowly missing Grandfather’s plumed hat. The dog went wild for nothing, Grandfather swore as one swears when one is born, as he was, with a title of nobility, and all I can remember was a flash of dark green and brown with a big red dot and that was it—and it has been it and probably will be it, for the species is getting rarer and rarer in the Alps.