A miner's pick - 2 August

A miner’s pick, which belonged to my great-uncle Cartou, helps me push aside petrified liana of ivy, at the entrance of an evident mining cavity. The beam of the electric lamp hits a square ceiling, the smooth walls betray the hand of man. It is difficult to know to what depth the gallery meanders. Have foxes or badgers made it their residence? Do wild boars or bears linger there? Not that there are many of them in today’s country but the post-ice age drawings in the cave of Bourg-l’Asile attest to the existence of these providers of furs and the old generation of hunters still counts among its ranks shooters who hit the bull’s eye with these honey-eaters, sheep-slaughterers and who, not listed under article 10 of the permanent statutory law of the hunting-police are not designated as maleficent or harmful animals like any fox, weasel, straying cat (yes, Mimine !), squirrel, ferret, badger, marten, polecat, musk-rat or rabbit, thus classified inside all wooded terrains or those replanted for less than ten years.