Sounds and Smells of Rural French Countryside Now Protected by Law

Hallelujah!  Thanks to Maurice, the rooster, and Sésame the horse, both of whom drew the most national outrage and attention, the ordinary sounds and smells you encounter in rural France are now formally protected by a new national French law.

They and other normal country beings all did their part in helping bring about much-needed legislation to preserve traditional rural life here and put an end to preposterous and absurd lawsuits around normal rural life.

Maurice, who has since gone to rooster heaven, and several other country creatures, now have the right to be exactly like they were created to be!

Roosters crow, frogs croak, cowbells ring, and even village church bells can keep ringing!

Horses can now innocently relieve themselves plowing the fields without recrimination.

It all started a few years ago, when Maurice, whose cock a doodle doos chanted as any normal rooster would came under attack by some intolerant city slickers from Paris on L’ile d’Oléron

They didn’t live there, but only occasionally came to vacation in their country house.

L’ile d’Oléron is a beautiful island off the coast of  France near Bordeaux that has only about 21,000 year-round residents but swells with tourists in the summer.

Corinne, Maurice’s owner tried everything she could to placate her rude troublemaker neighbors.  But Maurice still cock a doodled doo every morning despite all her efforts.

Eventually, the arrogant neighbors brought a suit against Corrine and her rooster Maurice.  It demanded that Maurice either shut up or be shipped away.

It was a long uphill battle., that had the whole of France pulling for this now famed rooster.   Finally, in 2019, the court ruled in favor of Maurice keeping his right to proudly greet the morning light with his  cock a doodle doos.

Before long there came another lawsuit, this one complaining about croaking frogs on a pond in the Dordogne, in the southwest part of France.

Again the proprietors of the pond whose family had lived there several generations were stupefied by the complaints.

Apparently, the frogs were fairly silent most of the year except at mating time.  At that time male frogs like to sing loudly to attract a mate, a natural froggy thing.

One noisy frog lawsuit must a set off another because a few months later it was only two frogs in a pond in the northern city of Arras that were targeted.

Initially, the complainants asked the property owners to catch the two frogs each night and seclude them in the house.

Besides being insanely ridiculous, the owners asked how in the world they would have the time to try to catch two hopping frogs a night!

Church bells ringing is an old complaint for some folks, not accustomed to the traditional bells of village churches.

For well over a thousand years church bells have not only announced Sunday Masses but also ring on the hour and half hours throughout France, from large cities to a small village.

Another ridiculous inane lawsuit happened in a small wine-growing village in Alsace.

Sésame, a pretty caramel-haired horse took pride in plowing between vines for her owner, a vintner who likes to keep his vineyards and wines biodynamic and organic.

A neighbor didn’t like the smell of Sésame relieving himself while doing his chores and complained also of flies.

I find all of these complaints ludicrous, but one that takes the cake was doing away with cicadas in the south of France.

Cicadas are a small grasshopper-like insect that is one of the national emblems of Provence.   They are considered necessary and beneficial to aerating the soil.

They are so entrenched as part of nature there, you will find ceramic cicadas, like the one I bought,  in souvenir shops!

On any warm summer night, they can be heard drumming for mates and yes it can be loud.

Snippety narrow-minded Parisian tourists have been known to file farcical complaints from time to time.  The worse was a proposal to bomb congregations of these beneficial insects with pesticides that thank goodness fell on deaf ears!

My own experience with countryside sounds was wonderful when I  had the grand opportunity and chance to live for two years in rural Europe.   The first was a very small French village close to the Swiss border near Geneva.

Although I missed Paris, there were many wonderful things to love about Farges.   The Alpine views, the crisp fresh air, nearby ski slopes, snow, and spacious gardens full of fruits and berries.

There weren’t any shops, not even a baker, but there was a post office and a church, and a lot of cows!  I marveled when I often encountered a troop of moo-cows crossing the road in the adjoining village for afternoon milking time.

During summer days, I loved the soft clinking of cowbells worn on bovines kept by my neighbor across the street.  In winter, they were mostly kept inside.

The most wonderful sound to my ears was the rustling mountain stream that fortunately ran next to my house, swelling in the late spring with melted snow from the nearby mountain tops.

The rhymic gurgling and whistling waters swishing downhill through the rocky stream bed lulled me to sleep many a night!

It also furnished water to a village water trough/fountain in the back of my billowing sage plants and plum trees.

Yes, the village church bells were loud because our house was nearby but I  found them useful and reassuring.  The number of bell rings depended on the hour of the day.

I could count on knowing that it was 5 o’clock in the wee hours of the morning when they started their day of ringing.   Every half hour was marked with a lower toned tinkle rather than a robust bell sound.

At noon and on Sundays before Mass, the was always a little melody played out.  Midnight I think the bells were diminished in sound going through the 12 rings, as I rarely remembered hearing them.

The resident roosters across the road also like to roar out cock a doodle doo at the first light of day, depending on the time of sunrise.

They would set off neighboring roosters in the next village as if they were competing to outdo each other in their morning serenades.

Otherwise, the village was quiet enough to hear an apple fall off the tree with a thunk.   In the middle of the night, the silence was so deafening that I could hear snow clumps falling off the trees.

In early spring, the only disagreeable smell I remember was of freshly spread manure that would suddenly sting your nose with its acrid pungency.  I noticed it most whenever I drove off the main highway leading into the village.   After a while, your nose acclimated.

The German village of Quirnbach was even tinier.  The rolling hills behind me were desolate looking, though pretty when covered with snow.

No shops, not even a post office, just mostly sheep and a few cows and a hundred or so of other resident humans.

It did have a church, whose bells toled at noon and on Sundays, but otherwise were silent.

During the day, birds chirping. sheep bleats and baas and occasional tractors could be heard.

At night, it was so dead quiet I welcomed the far-off hum barely perceivable from a highway about half a mile away.

There, any sounds of nature were welcomed and needed!  Sounds of nature equate life as it was meant to be in the natural world!

Nature does not need man’s permission to exist!  Humans who are arrogant enough to think they should be allowed to control nature, don’t need to settle in rural areas!