Nigel and I were walking in the mountains of the Madonie Park and had several contretemps with farm dogs – I’m not good with big dogs that bark and snarl at me. And that description covered the third set of dogs we met.
They were not close to a farmyard and
there was no owner about so we ended up pushing our way through thorny brush to get round them.
We also saw half a dozen small black pigs rootling in the under brush. I wasn’t sure
whether or these were wild boar so I googled. No, these were Sicilian black pigs and generally ran away from people.
However, apparently the area was also loaded with wild boar, up to 1.8 metres long which usually ran away, but sometimes turned aggressive.
Advice: ‘Slowly back away.’
‘It’s hard to back away,’ I said to Nigel, ‘When you’ve already fainted from terror.’
Through all my animal panics, Nigel was phlegmatic, tolerant with only a hint of
impatience.
As we neared the car, my mood improved, and in a pathetic fallacy (look it up) the sun came out too.
With the sun came a large number of massive grasshoppers, about 10cm long (Egyptian grasshoppers). If one got close, they launched suddenly into mid-air and rattled their four stiff wings.
‘Look, Nigel, look!’ But he just didn’t seem interested. Unless…
‘Nigel, you’re not scared of them are you?’
‘Let’s just say they can stay over there and I’ll stay over here, and then we will both be
happy.’
Obviously, when I was scared of farm dogs and wild pigs, Nigel was supportive and
helpful, so now that I had discovered his own Achilles’ heel, there was only one way to behave.
That’s exactly right – I taunted him mercilessly.
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