Auntie Get yer Gun

There is something you may not know about Auntie.  She loves to shoot guns.  Not to kill anything or anyone, mind you, but just for fun.  Pistols, rifles, air guns, whatever I can pick up and aim at a target is my idea of a good time.

When I was a girl I'd spend sunny summer afternoons in the fields surrounding our house shooting air rifles with the tomboy tolerant boys in the neighbourhood.  Most of what we shot at were old bottles with the occasional milkweed pod or tree thrown in and I was quite good at it.  The moment I shattered my first bottle with a single shot, I was hooked.

Last year while I was shooting targets at a game at the Monaco fair, hoping to win a lovely Hello Kitty mug, a friendly woman with her young daughter in tow picked up a rifle and started shooting targets beside me.  After 5 shots we both stopped to examine our handiwork.  "You're a good shot" she said to me to which I replied, "you are too!"

Then she asked me if I was a member of Monaco's shooting range. "Shooting range?" I replied.  I could hardly believe my ears.  Monaco had a shooting range?  Wow.  This could be my opportunity to learn how to shoot a pistol properly.

After a bit of research all systems were go.  Monaco's Stand de tir or shooting range, was founded in 1912 and is located in the neighbourhood called Fontvielle in La Carabine de Monaco, or Monaco's Gun Club. Most of the club's 4,000 square metres, a luxurious amount of space by Monaco's standards, is taken up with shooting ranges for anything from a 10 metre pistol (this is where Auntie shoots) to large calibre weapons that are used by the police, hunters and competitive shooters.  In fact it's where the police go to practice.

As it turns out, in order to join the Gun Club you need to be over 18 or have parental permission if you're not, fill in some forms, have your photo taken, pay a fee and then visit a doctor to get a medical certificate.  Getting the medical certificate didn't go quite as planned...

I thought that visiting the doctor would be just a formality, he'd look at me, ask a few questions to make sure I wasn't a nut case and then sign some papers.  Nope.  Instead, he and his nurse put me through a basic medical check-up that included blood pressure, an eye test, weight, height, and balance tests, an ear, nose and throat exam, a neurological exam and an EKG.  It must have been a slow day.

I didn't really mind all the poking and prodding but if I'd known, I would have come prepared and worn my best underwear.  Aside from that, I can definitely say that the medical exam was worth it because it was free and I found out I was in perfect health!  The big pay-off?  I left his office, certificate in hand.

If you've never shot at targets before, I can describe what it's like:  soothing and invigorating at the same time and it's the difference between the two that makes it so difficult to do well.  Just when you think you're doing fine, poppity - popping your targets with a steady hand, slowly the adrenalin kicks in and your hand starts to wobble, your eyes blur and your concentration unwinds.  When this happens, it's time to put down your pistol, take some deep breaths, retract your target and call it a day.  Overcoming the effects of the adrenalin is where the mastery comes in.

To quote my patient and Zen-like shooting teacher, Monsieur Jean, "Madame, you need to slow down, clear your mind, slowly release the trigger and the bullet will find the target by itself."  Well that sounds easy!

Practice makes perfect as they say and Auntie plans to practice as much as she can.

Who knows?  Maybe if I get good enough I can be in the 2012 London Olympics.

In the meantime, I'm thinking of all the stuff I can win at the fair!

Keepin' it Clean Part II. Poop et Scoop? Mais Non!

We know it was you!

It's one of those great French mysteries and it has not escaped the notice of anyone visiting France, especially for the first time.

No, it's not how the French eat croissants for breakfast and meat smothered in heavy sauces for dinner but still remain thin.  No, it's more mysterious than that.  It's why they leave dog poop everywhere.  Yes, dear readers, poop. As you can see,  Auntie is not afraid to tackle the big, stinky issues.

Imagine if you will, a fine and sunny day.  You decide to take a walk to look around and maybe do a bit of shopping.  One minute you're enjoying the view, merrily skipping along and then the next minute, SPLAT, SQUISH and PEW!  Your pretty shoe is covered in stinky brown dog poop.  So much for your good mood.

Everywhere you go in France it seems, you have to keep one eye on the ground at all times.  After a while it becomes a reflex but if you've just returned from a trip from somewhere where there's no dog poop and you're out of practice it's particularly perilous.  Trust Auntie on this.  Don't ask.

Free Poop bags!

For whatever reason, a lot of people in France own dogs and many of them love to leave their dog's poop wherever they want.  According to the Société Protectrice des Animaux,  the French own about 8.8 million dogs who each poop an average of 220 pounds a year each.  Uncle Jim did some calculations for me: annually, these 8.8 million dogs produce 19 million pounds of poop and that's enough to fill all the galleries in the Louvre almost 5 feet deep with poop.  That's high enough to reach the Mona Lisa's chin!

In Menton the poop situation is especially grim.  I once read in a guide book that half the residents of Menton were seniors, the other half were poodles and that's not so far from the truth!  In fact, there is such a poop problem in Menton that they have a special fleet of motorcycles that are customized for sucking up dog poop.  We call them the "Poop Patrol."

Here's how they work.  When a Poop Patroller spots dog poop, he pulls over, lifts a long, wide tube that's attached to a reservoir at the back of his motorcycle and places it on top of the poop.  After a few seconds, there's a grinding noise, a sucking noise, a bubbling noise, et voila! The poop is now safely contained in the reservoir and off he goes to the next pile of poop.   You always know when they've been on the job.  All that's left of the poop is a perfumed soap bubble.

"Woof!  Clean up for me - I can't do it for you."

Poop isn't just stinky and annoying but it's dangerous too.  One gram can contain 23 million fecal E.coli bacteria and numerous deadly pathogens such as campylobacter that can be passed on to humans.  It's enough to make you stay indoors.

Despite all the signs and fines and free poop bags, many French dog owners continue to leave poop all over the place and we'll never know what goes on in the minds of those knuckle-headed dog owners.  In the meantime Uncle Jim and I and our friends all take our shoes off at the front door, just to be sure.

Thank goodness the French don't keep pet horses!

 

i Puffi at the Billa? Let's go! Andiamo!

A trip to the Billa grocery store in Ventimiglia these days is even more interesting than usual.

Along with cheap pasta, a huge variety of Italian cheeses and great reusable shopping bags, until the end of October there's added incentive to battle the crowds to shop there:  the i Puffi promotion.

i Puffi is Italian for the Smurfs and Billa has launched their i Puffi promotion to coincide with Italian opening of the new 3D Smurf movie. As it turns out, Italians are crazy about the Smurfs.  Who would have guessed?

Here's how the promotion works.  For every €10 that you spend in Billa, you get a packet of 5 i Puffi stickers depicting scenes from the movie.  For €3.90 (€2.90 if you're a Billa fidelity card holder) you can buy a really nice hard cover album in which to stick your stickers.  

Of course I bought an album and started pasting in my i Puffi stickers last night and I had a grand time. I even learned a bit of Italian in the process.  I'll let you know when it's full.

In some of the packets, lucky shoppers will find special cards for prizes like  stuffed Smurfs or vouchers for store credit but the grand prize is what keeps me going back:  free shopping at Billa for an entire year.  I'd love to win that. 

Think of all that free pasta!

  

 

 

Keepin' it Clean, Part I. The Pacifier Man of Menton

In March of this year when the City of Ottawa announced their intention to cut household trash collection from once a week to once every two weeks I could almost see the flies cheering and beating their wings with glee.  What a happy and stinky time for all those hungry insects, insatiable raccoons, squirrels, rats, mice, cockroaches and other parasitic chow hounds that will join the flies in the stampede to the trash can buffet!

Here in the south of France, trash is collected six times a week and it takes no getting used to at all. How do they do it?  I don't really know but I'm glad they do.

In Menton, if you live in a house, every day you put your trash in your very own trash can and leave it by the side of the road.  If you live in a village with streets that are too narrow and steep for a trash truck to manage, you put your trash in a designated central place in a large communal receptacle that everyone shares.  Uncle Jim and I do this at our house in Monaco.  It's a good chance to mingle with the neighbours!

Along with the frequent household trash collection there is a huge fleet of trucks, boats, carts, hoses, receptacles and dedicated people who roam the streets and sea throughout the day who sweep, spray, empty, scrub, scrape, scoop, wipe and generally work hard to keep the streets and water for the most part, shining and bright.  The exceptions will be discussed in Keepin' it Clean Part II,  but I digress...

This morning as I was leaving the Marché U grocery store in the Port of Garavan, I met up with Jean-Pierre, one of Menton's most specialized street cleaners.

Jean Pierre roams the area around the port of Garavan between the sea and the wide pedestrian avenue on the Promenade du Soleil, collecting all the things that the messy people drop, throw, toss and discard. You always know when Jean Pierre is nearby because the street behind him is clean and by how he decorates his trash cart.  It's unmistakable.  For years now, Jean Pierre has been collecting all the tetines or pacifiers that he finds.  All of these colourful tetines form a pretty ring around his trash cart.  

On this beautiful sunny morning, I asked Jean Pierre how long he has been collecting the tetines.  "A few years," he replied and added that he finds more of them in the summer than the winter,  the summer being a prime time when tourists with babies sucking on tetines descend on Menton to swim on the beach.

 Judging by his cart, shops that sell new tetines in Menton are doing a booming business!

 

Wanted! Cats who eat Rats.

It seems that while Uncle Jim and I were away visiting Canada this summer, some four legged, beady-eyed pests were making trouble for Auntie in the garden in Menton.

When we got back to Menton this week, Celine told us that something was wrong with one of our mandarin orange trees.  It seems that the tree had a disease and on Thursday the gardener was going to take a closer look.  

It was obvious that something was wrong.  A lot of bark was missing on its upper branches and the gardener thought maybe the tree was diseased.  This was bad news.  

That mandarin tree was over 50 years old and was a star producer of tasty sweet, perfumed mandarins.  I use the little mandarins to make a delicious sorbet, which my Japanese friend said she dreamt about after eating it.  They also make excellent juice for Uncle Jim to sip in the morning while he reads the Financial Times.

When Thursday arrived, the gardener carefully slid between the trunks of the trees in our little citrus forest to poke around and get a closer look at the troubling situation.  After a few seconds, the branches shook a bit then stopped.  They shook a bit more and stopped.  After about one nail biting minute, the gardener popped out with the news:  our tree didn't have a disease at all.  It had rats!  That's right, rats were climbing up the tree and eating the bark! 

Supposedly this was quite common.  After the rats eat all the fruit they keep right on eating.  The bark, the gardener said, tastes sweet to them.

This seems to be Auntie's summer of vermin what with raccoons and squirrels stripping bare my grape vines and apple trees in Ottawa and moths making a snack out of my wool sweaters.

Nellie the Brave

Celine says that she often sees two French cats in the garden that she thinks belong to our neighbours.  There's a big fat white one and a small tabby that reminds her of Cat.  I guess they don't like to eat rats.

I think we need a Canadian cat on the scene to get the job done.  Like the Canadian Allies who came to help the French during WW2, the two French cats need our help!

Parsnip the Fearless

Maybe my friend Suzanne could send her kitties, Archie and Parsnip whom I understand are good mousers.  If they're busy maybe Liz can send her cat, Nellie, star of this summer's hit video, Nellie the Cat Plays with a Buzzing Cicada.  I think together they'd take care of the problem tout de suite!

Archie the Great

In the meantime, Celine went to Ventimiglia and bought a little "snack" for the rats.  The woman at the garden shop assured her that it would take care of the rat problem.

Paws crossed!