Under Siege
Alfie is proving his worth, at last!
For the past couple of weeks, almost every night, our garden has been ravaged by Ibex (or Cabra Montés). In the mountainous area in which we live, we have become used to seeing Ibex often, and have always been rather thrilled to see them in their natural habitat. Having wildlife in such close proximity is one of the things we love so much about living here.
However, we have been less keen to find that they have become more-than-close neighbours, and don’t wait to be invited.
The garden has been a labour of love, particular for Andrew, over the months since lockdown. Money and effort has been put into the buying and planting of bulbs, shrubs and fruit trees. Using as a foundation the almond, plum and fig trees that survived the build, we added cherry trees, an apricot (a house-warming gift from a neighbour), a pear and a peach, and all were beginning to get established. The cherry tree by the studio, in particular, had developed thick and verdant foliage and looked set to dominate its corner of the garden.
We first became aware of our nightly visitors when Alfie started to bark for no reason from his bed downstairs. Venturing into the kitchen to see what the fuss was about, Andrew was aware that there was a huge male Ibex, with the rearward sweeping horns, standing on the wall immediately outside the back doors. No wonder Alfie was going berserk. So began the visitations.
Every evening, as dusk turned to dark, we could see the Ibex on the rocks above the studio, circling as if in conference, discussing when it might be safe to leap the walls and feast upon the fruit trees below. Our sleep would be disturbed and we’d discover that plum trees had been knocked over, the pear tree uprooted and branches of the fig tree snapped off in the Ibex’s urgency to get to the ripening fruit. When Alfie raised the alarm, we’d dash out into the dark and see two, three of four large Ibex skittering over the walls in all directions, leaping into the shadows. But our interventions did little to put them off returning.
They would run raids for four or five nights, and then leave us alone. We assume they decided to pick on another garden as we know they have completely trashed the vegetable garden in our friend Rafa’s grounds. He has tried everything to keep the ravaging creatures out, installing impossibly high fencing, but somehow they manage to find a way in.
After a few quiet nights, Alfie raised the alarm once again and the Ibex had returned. Bark was stripped off every fruit tree in the garden. Leaves were chomped back to bare twig. Our beautiful cherry tree, green and thick, had gone. Not only had the Ibex denuded the trunk of bark, but they had deftly bitten off the entire top of the tree leaving nothing but a pale, vulnerable finger sticking out of the ground, no longer a dominant feature but a victimised testament to the indiscriminate vandalism and sheer destructive power of these unwelcome marauders.
We could now understand the despair felt by smallholders who do what they can to cultivate fruit and vegetables for their own consumption or to pass on to neighbours. The hunting of Ibex is controlled in Spain and any culling has to be carried out under the auspices of the ayuntamiento; when numbers become troublesome in the area, then steps are taken to reduce the impact of Ibex overcrowding.
For the past couple of weeks, as the evenings have been warm and dry, Alfie has remained outside on sentry duty, a role he seems to have adopted with some relish. We think he quite likes his new-found responsibilities, and huffs and puffs a great deal as soon as he so much as sniffs an approaching Ibex. During the night, we can hear the barks as he leaps to defend our territory. We stumble out of bed to check what he has seen and the other evening, we lurched into the dark to see Alfie tearing from one side of the garden to the other, an Ibex standing on one wall and his co-conspirators on the rocks above the other wall. We felt surrounded and attacked, these horned shadows circling and waiting to gain access where they are not wanted, undoing all the months of hard work and love to create a beautiful space. It’s bizarre how violated we both felt, and how enraged we were to have been so invaded.
The bare remains of our cherry tree stands stark, where before there was a burgeoning canopy of green. We hope that, by some miracle, a bud might appear to indicate that it has survived its ordeal. The other trees, their bark torn and shredded, have managed to defy the assaults, and Alfie continues to do a sterling job keeping the Ibex outside our perimeter walls.
It’s been a funny old time of late, and neither of us has been able to put our finger on why we feel strange. We have been able to get out and about to enjoy many of our favourite things about living in Granada Province. We managed to go and see the choir, Tenebrae, perform in the stunning setting of the Monasterio de San Jerónimo, as part of the Festival of Granada. We have been out to dinner, and lunch. We’ve been to the beach to relax in the sun, and we have had friends round to the house for barbecues. Life is not normal. Facemasks are obligatory in all open spaces, and queuing to get into the concert was controlled to keep everyone at least 1.5 metres away from anyone else, and the seating was marked out to keep everyone a safe distance apart. A drink and some tapas in a bar is more relaxed, and masks can be removed, but we are aware that, circling our own personal walls, there is the ever-present chance of something lurking, waiting to invade.
In recent days, I have felt unsettled that I haven’t had a project to get my teeth into. The #MyTravelPledge campaign, that filled so many days and hours during the past 4 months, is drawing to a natural conclusion, and we had a spate of bed and breakfast guests as soon as lock-down was relaxed. Now, though, we have hit something of a plateau. Visitors from outside Spain have clearly decided that travel abroad is not wise this year*. There are handfuls of UK property hunters doing the rounds, hoping to get settled before the end of this year, but there is no real consistency, nor are there signs of any real confidence. News filters through of new outbreaks of Covid-19, and worrying spikes in some areas that threaten air bridges and open borders. Rather than optimism, there is a feeling of defiance: we will carry on as best we can because life is for living, and if we have to carry on behind a face-covering, then so be it. We do everything we can to pick up where we left off back in late February and early March, because that is our life, and we have little choice but to carry on.
We realised today that our unsettled feelings stem not from a lack of a project but from the daily shift in the sands on which we find ourselves. We can take every precaution within our own power, but we are powerless when it comes to the government’s decision to close a border to protect its people. We are powerless to react when a newspaper covers yet another story of a new spike in infections, originating from one night out in a nightclub, or from customers of a local driving school.
I think that’s rather how we feel right now; not unlike the slender exposed trunk of our cherry tree, still standing on the corner by the studio, waiting for what might possibly be another onslaught from the circling threats in the nighttime shadows beyond the garden walls.
*This post was written shortly before the UK Government announced its decision to impose a quarantine on anyone flying into the UK from Spain.
