1986: My Happy Life in Provence

Chapter 88 Nightmare
There is no nightlife in Lourmarin.

The old pub will also close before 8 o'clock.

Those who appear on the road after 9 o'clock are people who have finished family gatherings and are rushing home.

If you see someone wandering around the village at 10 o'clock in the evening, you can consider calling the police.

If you see a group of people walking on the street at 11 o'clock at night, my friend, don't hesitate, follow them!

This means you have something exciting to watch!
I don’t know what went wrong.

Pierre only invited seven or eight people, but in the evening more than twenty people with buckets appeared at Ronan's door.

"Do we have to catch them at night?" Ronan covered his eyes with his hands to block the flashlight beams coming from all directions.

The scene of more than twenty people shining flashlights around at night reminded him of some movie scenes - a group of policemen were catching escaped criminals in a dense forest with steep terrain. The two groups were probably less than a kilometer apart, playing an adrenaline-pumping 'cat and mouse game'.

The only difference is that the background has now been changed to a vineyard, and the target of the hunt has become the Provencal grey snail, a famous French delicacy that feeds on grape leaves.

Pierre still demonstrates his leadership qualities in the field of snail catching.

He was wearing a professional headlamp, which gave him one more hand than the others to operate it, and he already had something in the bucket:

"Snails won't come out during the day unless it rains, so they can only be found at night. They come out at this time to eat, and when the sun rises, they hide and 'sleep' again."

Ronan looked around at the enthusiastic crowd looking for snails. Although he thought it was unlikely, he still wanted to confirm one question:
"The environment is so noisy, will the snail be scared and hide?"

These people really treated tonight as a 'rave party'.

Some were singing, some were shouting, and Ronan even heard some flirting sounds coming from a certain direction.

Well, Ronan didn't care where they were going with the snail, he just wanted to know if the mess would scare away the culprit who ate his grape leaves.

Pierre made two horns on his head:
"Snails have no hearing, their eyes can only see 6 centimeters in front of them, and they rely on smell to distinguish things."

He picked up a small ash from the bucket, pointed to the two tentacles on it and said:

"These two are eyes."

Then he pointed to a pair of smaller tentacles below and said:

"These two are scent sensors. They can smell about seven meters away."

After saying this, Pierre touched its short antennae and breathed into it again:

"Guess what I had for dinner tonight, little guy?"

"Garlic Sauce" Ronan fled three or four meters away.

He once heard a saying that the whole of Provence was smeared with garlic.

Garlic appears in everything in Provence.

Soups, salads, with fish, meat, seafood, spread on bread or kneaded into dough. If this still cannot satisfy some fanatics' love for garlic, they will add a portion of 'Provence garlic sauce' to the food.

It is very easy to make. Take some garlic, peel it and crush it, put it in olive oil and cook it on low heat for 15 minutes. Congratulations - you have a bottle of delicious sauce that will let people 10 meters away know that you like garlic!
Damn, Ronan's nostrils are now full of the smell of garlic sauce!
"Snails and garlic sauce are a perfect match, aren't they?" Pierre put the snails back into the bucket and made an innocent expression.

Ronan moved away from Pierre and went to the other side.

He doesn't like garlic sauce.
Moreover, the delicious food in his vineyard couldn't all go into other people's stomachs. If he stayed with Pierre, he would be doomed to get nothing.

As Pierre said, it is not easy to find snails on days when it is not raining.

Ronan searched for nearly five minutes but didn't see any sign of the snail.

Of course it is possible that he passed by, but he did not find them among the dense vines.

Ronan comforted himself happily:

That means your vineyard is safe, doesn’t it?

If the grapes get to the point where they can be found at a casual glance, they may not last until fall.

Then he relaxed and focused on the ground.

Without sufficient light, it's quick to lose patience trying to find snails among the vines and leaves.

Changing his target, he quickly found a thief that was about to climb up at the junction of the soil and the vine.

Ronan grabbed its shell and examined it carefully. He saw the eyes that Pierre mentioned, and also saw the tentacles underneath that were used to smell something.

"This is inedible." A rich garlic sauce wafted from one side.

"Why?" Ronan breathed through his mouth.

Pierre stood next to Ronan, shook his head and said:
"It's not yet adult."

"How did you determine that?" Ronan observed carefully.

Pierre pointed to the snail's shell:
"Look at the edge of its shell. If it curls up like a hat, it means it is an adult. Yours is flat, so you can't eat it yet."

"So what should we do with it now?" Ronan held the 'baby snail' in the air.

Pierre said regretfully:
"Last year, the country introduced a strict regulation on the capture and consumption of wild snails. Underage snails must be released into the wild. Those rich people eat them and turn them into protected animals."

You guys must have eaten it and turned it into a protected species, Ronan complained in his heart.

However, this is not the period when snails are most strictly protected.

In 1985, the government realized that if no control was exercised, the snails would be eaten to extinction. A few years later, when they discovered that the snails were really going to become extinct, they even set limits on the months during which they could capture them.

The French can only eat their own delicious snails after July. The ones they eat in other months are purchased from Eastern Europe.

Ronan reluctantly sent the snail back to where it had just been, and said politely:

"Please continue to eat my grape leaves."

Pierre was so amused by Ronan that he kept spraying garlic sauce gas all around:

"Don't worry, maybe you can eat it in another month."

The adult stage in snails is very fast.

Ronan shook his head and fled quickly.

Do I care when I eat?
It's this vineyard I care about!

As it turned out, Ronan's worries were unnecessary.

The enthusiastic villagers kept complaining that there were too few snails here and it was the smallest harvest they had had in recent years.

This made Ronan even more certain that snails were eaten by the people of Provence and became protected animals.

But even so, the snail catching activity that night can still be described as a "success".

Although they complained, there was a lot of food in everyone's bowls.

The men were happy to participate in this kind of activity which gave them a legitimate reason to leave their wives and children and go out, and the women were also happy to have a few more hours to chat. The flirting couple also carried their buckets to the woods after the end.

Everything was so successful, but Ronan had nightmares at night.

He dreamed of being chased by a strange man with a garlic head, running desperately and helplessly in the steep mountains and forests, with no light, no end, and no way out.

The terrifying sound permeated the entire dense forest:

"Guess what I had for dinner, little cutie?"

The next day, Ronan went to Louis's house with a bucket of snails.

"Where did you catch those fresh snails?" Leah's eyes emitted a greedy look that was no less than Pierre's.

"In my vineyard." Ronan brought the bucket to the kitchen. "I don't know how to make it, so I brought it to you."

Leah looked excited:
"Now is the season when snails are at their plumpest, so pack them full of garlic sauce."

Ronan froze in place.

He hates garlic sauce.

He also hates snails.

He hated it even more when these two things were combined together!
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(End of this chapter)