Natural Selection & The Rise of the Urban Pheasant

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Shortly before the hunting season opened, the countryside around us was teeming with delicious, well-nourished looking game. A bumper harvest of game birds was forecast, and hare was back on the menu for the first time in years. Wild boar were reportedly sighted at a notaire’s office making out their last will and testament. Some incautious individuals (ahem) made bullish predictions to their wives: “Empty the freezer, my sweet, for soon it will be sated with Natures bounty”, they may have said, “Partridges as plump as bishops, iridescent pheasant and hare, sleek from the summer grain”, they probably added, “a nutritious and delicious hedge against harsh winter’s thrall!”, they possibly concluded.

I suppose I first detected that something odd was afoot when the foodstuffs-in-waiting started getting cheeky. Driving along an isolated lane I could have sworn that a partridge made an obscene gesture at me involving a below-the-waist movement that a well brought-up galliform really should not know about. At the time I put it down to indigestion (on the part of the bird, not me), but a few days later I was mooned by a rabbit.

No matter, I thought, it shouldn’t diminish the flavour at all. The great day dawned, and suitably tooled up, we all took to the fields in search of dinner. And returned pretty much empty handed. Not that we’re crap shots (well, I’m not anyway – my parents were superb shots, competing regularly at Bisley, and my mother made the national team. I am genetically predisposed to hitting distant objects with explosively propelled projectiles), it was simply that there was nothing to aim at. They had all disappeared.

And so it has continued. Very, very slim pickings indeed. Over a number of drinks recently, a theory was developed. The birds and mammals we are hunting now are the descendents of perhaps 100 generations of animals WHO DID NOT GET SHOT. An authority on the matter (well, a virtual bloke I met down the cyber pub – and let’s face it some of these people can be less than reliable. My brother carried on a virtual relationship with a 22 year old cheerleader called Tammy from Florida for a while, only to then discover he was, in fact, sharing intimate conversation with a 28 stone unemployed abattoir technician from Utah called Billy. He doesn’t read this forum, so I feel safe and justified in sharing this particular family skeleton with you all, not least because as about the same time he cost us around 90 quid by downloading premium rate filth from the net to our PC when he was supposed to be looking after the houseplants for a couple of weeks. And guess who got blamed until he confessed? But I digress.) tells me that under certain ideal circumstances, evolution by natural selection can happen in about a dozen generations. This suggests that we are up against a highly superior race of game who have developed sophisticated survival strategies.

Personally, I think that the hares have gone against all previously observed behaviour and have dug burrows, that they have then sealed for the duration. The boar have disguised themselves as nuns (what else) and hopped on Ryanair cheapies to the UK (I guess that the smell could be a problem on the plane, but I suppose the boars would get used to it! *). That leaves the birds. Has anyone living in towns noticed the arrival of any particularly large and possibly deformed-looking pigeons over recent months? Has the hunting in the rest of France been as lean as it is here?

(* From an original joke by Socrates around 399 BC)

[Piprob]

My heart skipped a beat when I first took the 'h' in your pheasant to be a typing error. I thought maybe they are classified as game this year. But alas ...  ... ...

I've got the binos trained on the vegetable garden. They'll make straight for the greens, just like their smaller cousins.

[IAN_S]

I think all the French pheasants have been sent to the UK as the brit ones all got too fat to fly, and you know how honourable the shooters are, they won't shoot anything on the ground.

[Alexis]

Nothing strange about this at all.  They all get those little calendars free from the tabac every Christmas and they mark the dates.

This was also a common occurance in the part of Yorkshire I used to live in.  The pheasants used to sit on the gates looking attractive and the day of the shoots, they had disappeared.

Not so funny when you had paid 3000 quid for a few days shooting......  Or perhaps it was!  (This was ten years ago - must have gone up in price.)

[Fontremy]

All this talk of urban peasants, shouldn't this be on the "class" posting?!

[Piprob]

Ah yes, Fontremy, but that would only attract the attention of the 'Thought Police'. This way, we can amuse ourselves a little more discreetly without causing any acute sense-of-humour failure.

 

[Iceni]

I don't know if the French go in for mass breeding of shooting stock but every year in the UK thousands make a break for freedom - farmers are now having no end of problems with mass pheasants on their land ( read an article which stated millions had escaped but cannot find it now).

If the UK gov follow through and ban shooting life could become a fox and bird obstacle course.

We managed to kill what we think was the last rabbit who was digging up our veggie plots. Too small to eat but it is buried in the garden and the official two finger salute is provided each time we walk past it.

[Dick Smith]

Looking out of a train window in Yorkshire recently I saw a Golden Pheasant marching about a ploughed field - a magnificent sight, but probably no brighter than the average.

Government 'following through' on shooting? Do you know something that Peter Hain doesn't?

[Pushkin]

"We managed to kill what we think was the last rabbit who was digging up our veggie plots. Too small to eat but it is buried in the garden and the official two finger salute is provided each time we walk past it."

One imagines a little paw rising from the grave to make the time honoured gesture of derision.... The salute in question was instituted by English archers long ago when they were engaged in their version of la chasse.  Perhaps one archer brought with him his pet bunny, who later settled in France. If so, was the unfortunate deceased rabbit a direct descendant, simply repeating learned behaviour handed down through the generations?  

 

Pete (Not Sue)

 

[Piprob]

I think Pushkin is on to something here. The animal kingdom has its tail up. They have been encouraged by the success of the UK anti-hunting lobby and now believe they can take the p*ss with immunity. Why this answer did spring to mind immediately I don't know. After all, wasn't the problem first brought to Living France by Quillan, when his moles started digging-up his railway, an unfortunate episode that was all too quickly followed by an ugly infestation of rogue chickens?

Where will it end?

[Anton Redman]

The last grouse I saw had taken up residence at the dump in Kingston upon Thames.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

[quote]The last grouse I saw had taken up residence at the dump in Kingston upon Thames.[/quote]

You see - the massed ranks of drinkers at the Café des Sports were not wrong! Here we have a bird that naturally occurs on moorland and heath taking residence in an urban environment and scavenging on rubbish instead of...instead of doing what grouse would otherwise do! Anton - did you notice if any attempt had been made by the bird in question to disguise itself as a seagull to complete the effect???