L'Hermine le renard et le blaireau - Documentaire animalier

Translation by Jean Laflute Long after the storm, when the sun returns to its light and offers the most beautiful landscapes to the human eye, snow and cold remain synonyms of hunger, of difficult travel, and often of death to the wanderers. Distrust, endurance, and slow movements become survival rules. For the observer, snow is a perfect ally. It offers to those who know how to read all the information on the whereabouts of the animals living in this place. The snowy coat then becomes a faithful betrayer, knowing how to get us into a game of tracks, often fruitful. On the hard snow, which now bears its weight, the fox is on the hunt. Elegance of the pace and efficiency of all senses awakens it, able to detect, under the white coat, the prey to be seized. Because snow is also a shelter under which an unsuspected animal activity is concealed. For the hermits, putting their nose on the surface of the snow is a game to the extent of their liveliness, their flexibility, and the apparently inexhaustible energy they possess. In winter, the white coat of the hermits helps them to go unnoticed despite the permanent agitation they can't get rid of. Unpredictable, unseizeable, all in it is movement and anxiety never appeased. The diabolical speed of surface movements is also exercised underground, where the hermits explore the galleries dug by the rodents. In fact, a good part of the incessant activity of these animals has an essential purpose, to detect and capture rodents to which they make a continuous hunt. In this trap, sight and smell, to which nothing escapes, play an essential role. And the underground refuge of the hermits will be of no use to them. In the mountains, the arrival of spring is made slowly. The milder temperature makes the first signs of the renewal of the vegetation appear, without being able to melt the thick layer of snow. The hermit is still there, faithful to herself, flying to the ground's edge, stretched like an arrow along the jagged path. Only her appearance has changed. Under the influence of the milder temperature, her white hairs are gradually replaced by the brown fur of summer clothing. The flair in action, the hermit always hunts, and again. But she hunts or threatens other predators, to whom she sometimes serves as a prey. She seems to have a very high awareness of the dangers that threaten them. When they are active on the white plain of their territory, all their behavior is full of fever, constant fear, that only the return near their hole seems to be able to calm for a few moments. Later in the season, spring meteorology sometimes has unexpected whims. The late snowfall then provokes curious discordances between the first hermits who have already put on their summer clothing and the landscape in which they evolve. There again, only hesitation and fear to overcome before withdrawing for a few seconds from the safety of their hole. Conversely, animals with late fur are sometimes extremely visible when a quick snowfall surprises them in their winter clothing. Dilemma of the hermit, if she could ask herself the question, is it better to be brown on a white background or white on a green background? Obviously, this does not bother them the least in the world. White or brown, on grass or on snow, the hermits will always have the same bouncing and unpredictable mobility, for the cameraman's biggest nightmare. The arrival of spring also marks the resumption of the activity of other animals infinitely more discreet than the hermits. Without snow, the discovery of their coming and going is more difficult. However, an eye exercised by the hermits will quickly make some discoveries. In the growing vegetation, long tracks of beaten earth maintained by the regular passage of animals show an intense activity. The signature of the authors is marked in the soft earth. Imprints, clearly readable, indisputably those left by the hermit. It is then enough to go up these real boulevards to discover the terriers in which these animals take refuge during the day. But the meeting is still far away. For the observer discreetly settled near the terrier, a long wait begins, whose starting point is the sunset. It is the delicious and uncertain moment when the noises of the world slowly fade away, replaced by the silence of the night. All senses are then awake, ready to catch the slightest event. Inside the silent terrier, the hermits have slowly woken up. The moment of their departure is near. For them, as for the hermits, this moment of the passage between the safety of their underground refuge and the outside world is a real test. Their distrust is then at its peak. It is out of the question to flow out of its hole without a thorough inspection of what is happening on the surface. All the senses of the hermits are alert at this moment. The most important is undoubtedly the smell. The humid and hypersensitive trough captures and analyzes in detail the landscape with a thousand smells that man has no access to. Verification is slow, methodical, and the slightest unusual smell will return the hermit to the bottom of his hole. Everything changes, however, when the young are there. Their carelessness and their desire to discover the outside world are often the reason for their mother's instinctive distrust. A few steps away, despite the reassuring presence of the rest of the family, the male has not yet overcome his fear and he still hesitates to leave for his nocturnal expedition. The female, visibly tired by the upbringing of her offspring, begins a common ritual for all young and old hermits who have just come out of the terrier. The methodical scratching of their thick fur, a practice that seems to bring the most intense satisfaction. The young hermits stay with their mother for several months. At first, the outings are limited to the immediate surroundings of the terrier, where they spend a good part of the time playing among themselves. Despite appearances, the game is much more than a simple entertainment for young animals. It allows them to learn all the vital gestures they will have to use in adult life, such as fleeing, defending, mastering a prey, or mating. Leaving their offspring to their occupations, the adults go on their own in search of food. In this exercise, the exceptional flair of the hermits plays an essential role. Better than sight, it allows them to find on the ground and under the ground insects, worms, lichens, and all kinds of prey they make their own. The hermits' hunt will last a good part of the night. But before the first light of dawn, everyone will have reached the depths of the terriers. If the hermits' suspicious and fearful character makes them lead a discreet existence between the bottom of their terriers and their nocturnal occupations, the foxes, on the contrary, do not hesitate to show themselves in broad daylight. And yet their suspicion is legendary. This paradox is due to the fact that they have absolute confidence in their senses. The hearing, the smell, the sight have indeed reached such a degree of perfection that the slightest suspicious presence is instantly detected from a great distance. All that remains then is to spread out quickly. Foxes put their extraordinary sensory faculties at the service of their hunting. Nothing can escape them, not the slightest noise of a rodent moving in the grass, not the smell of a bird's nest, and even less the distant presence of a prey far too big for them. Foxes hunt in a flurry at random on their territory. They travel long distances without a precise target. A smell, a noise, attracts them from one side or the other, or sometimes makes them go back on their feet. Then they leave, stop again to nibble on an insect or a worm, before continuing on their way. When they hunt, foxes sometimes lose all trust, as if the attention paid to the search for food made them forget their safety for a moment. This is particularly the case in spring when females feed their young. At this time, they spend most of their time swallowing everything they can catch. They then return to the burrow, where this food is gurgled into the mouths of the foxes who wait impatiently. Fox burrows are located near their hunting grounds. Very often they are hidden in the forest or in a hedge with thick vegetation, in the shelter of indiscreet eyes. The young foxes are born there in March, but begin to leave the burrow only a month later. Unlike the young calfs, foxes leave the burrow as early as night. At the age of two months, they are small balls of hair covered with a woolen coat, slowly discovering their environment. The fox has not yet transmitted her distrust and ancestral fears to them. However, in their clear eyes, they already pierce the innate and instinctive fear of man. The outings outside the burrow are essentially dedicated to play. Within a radius of a few meters around the hole, everything is a pretext for the amusement for which foxes have limitless imagination. Their curiosity is insatiable. It is exercised in particular on every new object they discover around the burrow. This time it is one of the cameras that shows the effects of their discovery appetite. Quickly, the device is put out of use and then abandoned by the animals. For once, they have not found how to use this curious toy But anyway, there are so many other ways for them to have fun. In the course of the day, and in the midst of carelessness, the first reflexes of the foxes are put in place. And the slightest abnormal event is quickly detected. But it is not the presence of a peak that will disturb their serenity. And when sleep gradually takes over the small tribe, it is no longer necessary and none of the members can resist it for long. Between play, nap and feeding by the sea, foxes grow little by little. Over the course of the days, they remain more and more out of the terrier which they are now moving away from without hesitation. Exhausted, the fox still watches over them, but feeds them less and less. To tell the truth, foxes are now able to manage on their own, even if they are sometimes content with a carcass of cats probably found dead on the side of a road. After long months dedicated to the upbringing of these young, the fox can finally take a little rest. This is not the case, however, of the hermine, whose natural agitation has only been accentuated for some time. These crazy races bring her more and more often to a small stone wall where she has her nest. Indeed, she laid eggs in this place a few weeks ago and these little ones are impatiently waiting for her. The four foxes do not leave a single bed. They spend most of their time playing and exploring all the nooks and crannies of the old wall under the attentive surveillance of their mother. Of course, this hermine is constantly hungry. It has been a long time since breast milk calmed their appetite and they know how to incite their mother to go hunting. During these expeditions, the hermine exploits the vast pastures surrounding her refuge and which she knows every nook and cranny. This is where she found in abundance her favorite prey. While their mother executes the rodent she detected at the bottom of her hole, the hungry young ones become impatient and dread the imminent arrival of their food. The wait will be short. The hermine did not waste time despite the imposing size of the hermine that she had to transport over a hundred meters. Immediately after dropping the victim at the bottom of her hole, the hermine sets off again for a new expedition because even a large hermine is not enough to calm the appetite of four rodents. In the wall, the feast began immediately. After a few confrontations, the most hungry or the most combative young man appropriated the rodent's gut. The voracity of young hermines is such that in a few minutes the meal is almost finished. Soon there are only a few pieces of flesh left on the rodent's carcass of which each bone is carefully cleaned. For more than a month, the female continues the supply of her small family to the large dams of the countryside which make up most of the menu. Then, little by little, the hermine begins to lead her troop to hunt. Taking the lead of the convoy, she leads her young ones and incites them to leave the wall which is not done without hesitation despite the encouragement she gives them. In a few seconds, everyone will have taken the big step towards the unknown. Well, almost everyone because the little one seems to have a little more trouble than his brothers to embark on the adventure. One more effort and he has finally decided to join his mother who is patiently waiting for him. All they have to do is to go to the little hole to find the rest of the family waiting for them in the grass of the talus. To be continued...