My favorite parts of the day are when we take the dogs for a walk. We do the two-mile loop in the morning before coffee and in the late afternoon before dinner, climbing steeply through olive groves and fig orchards before finally flattening out at the top of a wide mesa covered with strawberry trees and oak shrubs. Once on top you can look south over the Aegean towards Athens, or look north over the Pagasetic Gulf towards Mount Olympus. It is up there that you realize that Greece is a land of sea and mountains—with not too much in between.
The two-mile loop through the “ranch” is wild boar territory. We regularly see their tracks, ranging from tiny (as if two pinkies were pressed into the mud) to terrifyingly huge. They also wreak havoc with their rooting, flipping over giant chunks of marble and limestone and digging up roots and plants. Jonathan has encountered groups of the beasts twice while running. I had yet to see one — until last week.
On Elena’s last night of her recent visit, she decided to join us on our evening stroll with the dogs. It has been a remarkably warm January, with clear skies and gentle breezes coming up off the Pagasetic Gulf. That evening was no different and we were even sweating a tad from the steep climb. As we worked our way down the hill towards home, we noticed that the dogs had vanished. I gave a whistle. Jonathan yelled. Instead of barreling down at us with her fluffy tail in the air, Lada answered with a distant bark.
“What now?” Jonathan moaned. “I think I hear a bottle of wine calling me from home.”
“Something’s wrong,” I said, before heading back up the hill in a sprint. I found her after 10 minutes down in a small ravine thick with shrubs.
From a distance, the hills appear to be covered with single, continuous olive groves. But actually there are tons of separate groves, each owned by different people. Instead of being delineated by barbed-wire fences, the separate groves are often distinguished with letters painted on trees or by rows of wild shrubbery. It’s in the shrubbery, where it’s dark and cool and safe from hunters, that the boars live.
As I peered into the darkness, I realized Lada had found herself a boar. Lada was standing and barking frantically while the boar seemed to be cowering up against a stand of tree trunks. Molly was nowhere to be seen. With tales of boar goring vivid in my mind, I yelled at Elena to call for Molly and go straight home.
Elena’s healthy inclination toward self preservation kicked in and she vanished. Jonathan, still muttering something about wine-thirty, appeared a minute later, his eyes growing large as he realized what was happening. I could sense his own self-preservation reflexes rising to the surface, but he resisted fleeing and tried to coax Lada out from another direction. Eventually, the dog realized that it was dinner time and came out to us, her tail high in the air with pride: The victorious boar hunter!
We headed home, assuming Molly had sensed the danger and bounded off ahead. That was when I heard a howling.
I looked at Jonathan. He looked back at me. “A seagull?” he said, looking up into the sky. When we heard it again, he turned and ran back up the hill, yelling her name every thirty seconds or so, to which Molly would respond with a little howl, guiding Jonathan to wherever she was.
Eventually he spotted her at the edge of another wooded area. She sat calmly and regally in her usual way, but wouldn’t come to him when he called. He approached, finally realizing that she was caught up in something. She had walked into a wire snare, intended for boars. He extracted her fairly easily. She was uninjured because she instinctively knew not to struggle or resist.
Once I saw the snare, I realized that this is what that poor boar must be trapped in. Trapping wild animals in Greece is illegal and inhumane and a lazy ass way to hunt if you ask me. Although I was very relieved that both of our dogs were safe, I couldn’t help to think of the boar dying slowly from exhaustion and injury. The boar needed a quick death, meaning I needed to find someone with a gun.
Theo is our friendly olive farmer and philosophizing neighbor. He is usually on his tractor clearing weeds from his olive groves, tending to his vineyard or fig orchard, or whacking weeds. No matter what he is doing, though, he always has time for a conversation about a variety of topics—climate change, wildfires, taxes, the government, capitalism, inequality—you name it. I asked him recently if he would give me a quick lesson on how to prune our olive trees, to which he replied, “it has taken me 20 years of close observation to know how to correctly prune a tree.”
I guess a quick rundown was out of the question.
I quickly found Theo down the road on his tractor. Once we got through the usual pleasantries about the olive harvest and weather, I told him the story about Lada, Molly, and the trapped boar. His face grew very concerned: “This is very serious,” he said. He told me that his dog, Romi, was stuck in a snare for two hours, during which he was severely lacerated. Theo didn’t like the fact that there were more snares up in the Koukouleiki hills or the fact that there was a boar slowly enduring an agonizing death.
But he was also hesitant to do anything about it, because if we were to call someone, we might be accused of illegally trapping the boar. A serious problem indeed. While Theo quietly contemplated the situation, I sipped on the Mythos I brought along to calm my nerves. He knew of a guy that we could trust, a guy that would know what to do. Luckily the guy, Kosta, had just got home from work, and could head our way immediately.
Kosta arrived in a small economy car from the 80s. They told me to jump in the back and we were off. We drove down the dirt road that passes in front of our house. I informed them that the boar was up the steep part of the road and there was no way that the economy car was going to make it, so we headed out on foot. I was in a hurry because it was getting dark, but was told to slow down as we worked our way up the hill. I was uncertain of where the boar was since I had run through the fields as I was tracking down Lada’s bark. As we neared the general area, Kosta told me to keep quiet and stay on the dirt road. Although the boar was most likely immobilized, they have been known to escape these entanglements, upon which they become angry, dangerous beasts. When I realized that this method could take all night, I joined them in the search, and soon recognized the break in the shrubbery.
“There,” I said. “He’s in there.” Within seconds, Kosta fired the rifle—the boar was dead.
It took another twenty minutes or so to unravel the boar from the snare. I watched and continued to sip my now lukewarm Mythos. Kosta determined that the boar was a young male, around 60 pounds. They dragged the boar through the olive grove and left it by the dirt road to pick it up with the car. As the three of us walked back to the car, Kosta found two more snares. He knew where to look, and now I do too. Once we made it back to the car Kosta told me, “kαλή δουλειά,” (good job) and gave me a high five. I declined the ride back to the house, and headed the short distance home on foot, finally finishing my Mythos, my nerves still rattling from the ordeal.
A few days ago, Theo showed up with a bag of boar meat—a gift from Kosta. Theo gave me a quick tutorial on boar preparation: Leave it in the freezer for a month, then wash it carefully, soak it in vinegar for an hour, and finally pressure cook it with tomatoes, oregano, and garlic for 40 minutes.
I thanked him and he started to leave. But then he turned around and warned me to be careful when it comes to snares and so forth: “We don’t know who we’re dealing with,” he said. “We don’t want to go to war with the wrong people.”
I shuddered a little at the thought. We will be careful and will be on the lookout for more cruel traps. In the meantime I can’t help but feel a bit of vindication at the thought of some cruel lazy-ass hunter going to check on his snare, only to find a neurotic pup named Lada’s curiosity deprived him of his prey.
Wow. Wrenching and beautifully written. Miss you!
You are such a good writer, enjoyed your story (hearing your voice!) very much!