1. Stop snoring your keeping me awake...
As they lay asleep in the sleeping bags in their two man army bivvy (tent) Dave awoke to the sound of snoring. He dug he his buddy in the back saying stop your snoring your keeping me awake, as his buddy moaned and groaned at him for poking him in the back, Dave rolled over and attempted to go back to sleep again.
Once again the snoring started, unhappy Dave slapped his mate, saying will you pack it in I am trying to sleep, to which his mate replied I'm not asleep. Dave's response was "then who is making that snoring sound", then they both heard it, switching on his torch the light landed on a Wild Boar with its head poking through the entrance of their tent. The Boar was eating what food they had left on their plates from the meal earlier in the evening, which they had not be bothered to clean away and had left just inside the entrance to their tent.
It's turns out that they ran for their lives, through closed end of their tent screaming PIG as they went, Also I can tell you getting out them old army sleeping bags in a hurry was no mean feat.
The others guys wondered how it was that two big guys could leave their tent through the unopened end without pulling the tent down. I guess when faced with a Wild Pig you can do just about anything, as you will see in my next story.
We where on the firing range in Hohne, Germany. It was a lovely day and we were waiting for the range to close. I was stood next to the driver of a Landrover, his door was open and another guy was leaning on the door. When suddenly from around a bush, five little piglets came running, they stopped dead when they saw us, paused for a brief moment, then turned tail and ran like bats out of hell.
I turned round and the guy who was leaning on door had disappeared, I looked at the driver who was laughing his head off at the guy sat next to him. It was the chap who was by the door.
The driver said he could not believe what he had just seen. This man had jump into the passenger seat of the Landover, from a standing position without it seems even touching the driver on the way through, while shouting at the same time, "move over piiiggggs".
The gap between the driver and the steering wheel in a Landrover is very small, and I do not understand how he managed to do it, considering he was only just a bit smaller than me, and I am all of 6' 4". Needless to say he did not hear the end of it for the rest of the firing camp, and I wonder, who was more afraid him or the piiiggggs?
On another occasion I was driving on the range roads in Germany with my boss when suddenly from my side of the vehicle I spotted a Wild Boar. Charging out of the woods he came within inch's of my door before turning and running along side my vehicle for a short distance.
Nothing special about that I hear you say. Well, this fella came to within just a few inches below my window. He was ONE BIG PIG. I think that is something to write home about, especially as I believe if he had hit the door he would have done some very serious damage. It was like being charged by a Rhino.
Once again we are in Germany on exercise, exactly where I do not remember. What I do remember is that Robert one of the guys was particularly good at making the sound of a Wild Boar squealing. One of my buddies Ian also known as Snake was, shall we say not keen on Wild Pigs as a result everywhere he went he always carried a machete with him, you know just in case he met one.
Well, one evening Snake went for a shovel recce (a call of nature) he grabbed his VIP (very important paper) and off he set into the night, deep into the woods. Robert had decided unknown to the rest of us to follow Snake, with the intention to sneak up on him and to pretend that he was a Wild Boar knowing full well that Ian was not keen on them.
Robert had managed to sneak up very close to Ian from behind without being detected by him, once Robert felt he was close enough he let out an almighty pig like squeal, at which point Snake (who was squatting nicely) grabbed his machete and swung round with his arm fully extended with the full intention of taking out what he believed was a Wild Boar.
Snake, had missed Roberts head literally by a few inches and embedded the machete into a tree, at which point Robert took to the hoof and ran for his life, before Snake could get himself together. Realising it was Robert playing a joke on him Snake was determined to catch Robert and teach him a lesson and he shouted it out in no uncertain terms.
Needless to say we all heard the shouting and commotion going on and wondered what had happened, eventually when everyone came together and things had settled down, Robert and Ian shared their story with us, at which point we absolutely wet ourselves with laughter. Here was Snake, well known for his ability to take good care of himself in a scrap terrified of a Wild Boar. I guess the VIP became all too important for him in that moment.
5. On top of the water, perhaps not a good idea...
While
I was working in Marbella in Spain I went up into the Refugio de Juanar
National Park area to work with a young man and his anger (see The Chaffinch and the Young Man's Anger). At the end of my stay I had the opportunity to go into the wilderness and spend one night up in the mountains.
I
walked up the trail from where I had been dropped of by my friends and I
spent a lot of time exploring the surrounding area between the pines
and the olive groves. I got to see quite a bit, warblers were plentiful
and the odd eagle passed overhead.As the light began to fade I was walking along a trail to find somewhere to pitch for the night, when within inches of my right ear a Red-necked Nightjar flew passed me and landed in the middle of the trail a short distance in front of me, it was one of the most thrilling experiences I have had as Nightjars are not that easy to see and this chap presented me with some great views.
I eventually decided on a place to sleep for the night, it was on top of a small construction which supplied the water for the surrounding olive groves, as I settled down for the night I could hear the Wild Boar moving around high up in the hills behind me, and as I lay there listening to the night sounds, I became aware that the pigs were getting closer and it sounded like there was quite a lot of them as well.
As the sounds continued to get closer to me, it slowly dawned on me that they the Boar might actually be heading my way to get their first drink of the night. Thinking to myself, perhaps it is not a good idea to sleep here, very shortly I could be surrounded by a heard of Boar and bedded only a few feet off the ground. And I know from my experiences with Wild Boar you give them lots of respect, because if you don't one can be tough to deal with, let alone a heard of them. So, I decided to head off down the trail just to be on the safe side. I eventually found a place where it felt fairly safe to spend the night in amongst some rocks, along side the trail.
It was a cold night and sleep was sporadic at best, suddenly I became aware that something was close by, I opened my eyes and there right in front of me, looking round the boulder in front of me was you guessed it a FOX, breathing a sigh of relief I exchanged greetings with him before, he moved off, he looked like a young male who seemed a bit curious because he had come so close to me, then I remembered that I had bought some fresh meat earlier in the day, which had a strong smell to it and as such I was going to attract the attention of animals from miles. Doh!
The
rest of the night was uneventful apart from loss of sleep, as dawn came
I decided I would take a slow walk down the mountain, I could see
Marbella in the distance. Along the way I encountered a beautiful Lesser
Kestrel doing the most amazing dance with wind flying very close to the
rock face, the pure skill and mastery this bird showed was out of this
world, you could see he was clearly in tune with his surroundings, he
knew every nock and granny on the rock face and used it to show off his
art of flight.One year I was taking part in a leadership course in Germany, I was hoping to get promoted to Lance-Bombardier (this rank is used instead of Lance-Corporal by the Royal Artillery of which I served 22 years with). This course was held on Sennelager Training Area in Central Germany and it was during the winter, back then the winters in Germany could be heavy and this winter was no exception, the snow was up above our knees in places. It was a good time to practise snow shelters which we lived in for a short while.
Suffice to say the instructors gave us lots of things to do, there was very little time to sit around and tell story's, as a result we quickly burnt of the food we had and I for one was always in need of more food. It was during one of our tasks, I and another guy were moving along the edge of the training area to try and avoid being caught by the enemy, when we walked into this truly wonderful smell of hot food just drifting on the air. We wondered who could be cooking all the way out here we where miles from the nearest town and village, so we decided to investigate.
As we came up to the perimeter, we encountered a group of German Hunters with there families gathered around and drinking beer (a bit early in the morning for beer I thought, mmm why not) and there was this lovely pot of hot food on the go. In my best German I asked what they were doing and the reply was, we are cooking Wild Boar and would we like some.
We looked at each other and said, you know what, sod the task lets eat. One of the hunters asked in exchange could they take a look at our weapons, well were not really supposed to hand our weapons over to anyone, you can imagine what the consequences would be if we lost them. However, on this occasions they seemed like really nice folks and the Boar smelt great, so we said why not, now hand me a bowl of that Wild Boar Goulash please.
What a cracking meal it was too, and we risked one bottle of beer as well, nice.
While walking through the woods with my girlfriend, we were enjoying just being in nature and as we silently walked the trail, there was a sudden commotion, the breaking of branches, and the thumping sound of something heavy running through the forest. As I turned I saw two Wild Boar heading off at a rate of knots, clearly they had been spooked by our presence. We tracked after them and found their laying up point, the leaf litter on the forest floor was well compressed, these guys had been there for a while, asleep I guessed.
It was great to see my first UK Boar.
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