CHAPTER TWELVE


If you browse through a travel brochure of Cap Sizun ( Audierne is the jewel of this region), you'll see that there are countless numbers of footpaths, bridle ways and cycle tracks. For nature-lovers it's Heaven on Earth !
Off season we enjoy taking the dogs along a hiking path known as the coastal or smugglers'footpath. The dogs can frolic ,and we can breathe the beauty of the ocean, when it is raging as well as when it is as smooth as a millpond.
But now school holidays are on and city dwellers have swapped their town suits for casual wear. They are striding along the seashore, cells up, ready to take photos of the most impressive wave, the biggest seagull, the flashiest heather. So we make way for those poor creatures deprived of fresh air all year long ( I'm a bit derisive, aren't I ?).
Thus, we prefer to shelter our walks in the nearby wood. It's totally different but a good place for daydreaming, anyway.
So, the other day we were walking in the wood, at a relaxed pace when suddenly we could hear a bird flapping its wings rather oddly. We stopped dead and pricked up our ears to locate it. We felt we were quite close to it, so we pussyfooted till we caught sight of it : a baby tit ! It didn't fly away when it saw us, but kept flapping its wings more desperately, instead !!
We realized its head was stuck in the bark of a tree. It must have dug its beak too deep into the trunk to get some seeds or a worm, and then got unable to release itself.
My husband tried to pull it out gently, in vain. For a split second we felt helpless. Leaving that poor tit in such a trap meant sentencing it to death :
out of question for the two animal-lovers we are !
Fortunately my husband always has a pocket-knife with him. He took it and little by little managed to widen the split in which the poor birdie was 
"jailed ". Pieces of bark went loose and then... a last flapping of wings, a thankful twitter and our tit flew away to a safest place.

We've never taken part in a sea or mountain rescue, but yet, now we have one more string to our bow : forest rescuer !

Stable-lad, budding gardener, why not forest warden now ?