An Animal Activist's View on the Riviera, Spring 2010

Guénady is a native Californian, a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, and has lived as an expat in France for over thirty years. This experience has afforded unique opportunities for observing French society and, in particular, Guénady's main center of interest, the French animal defense movement. Guenady is also a member of the French Syndicat des Journalistes et Ecrivains.

Demonstration Saturday June 19th, in Nice.

As I was coming to my office on foot at dawn this morning, as I usually do, accompanied by one of my dogs, loping wolf-like in front of me on the sidewalk, illicitly leash-free, we were passed by a speeding car playing one the locals' favorite games : squash the pigeons pecking in the garbage cluttering the road.

This game is usually played by boy racers in their hot rods with radios blaring, but the guy this morning wasn't driving a hot rod and he was long past the 'boy' stage of his existence, at least physically, if not mentally.

Fortunately, those pigeons were faster than his beat-up old sedan, and he roared on to his certainly miserable job on some factory assembly line or in some janitorial position. Squashing a few pigeons, when he can, is probably the highlight of his day, poor guy, and today he missed out...

Speaking of pigeons, certain animal defense associations in Nice have recently won a long and bitter battle to end the City's contract with a company which has, for years, captured them with nets for extermination. They are taught to expect food for a week or so, on the same patches of grass every morning, before the day when vast nets are laid down first, then the bait scattered on top. The exterminators go off for a leisurely coffee, returning later to flip the edges of the net over, on top of the pecking birds, who are then, one by one, caught by hand and stuffed into low, orange plastic crates to be 'humanely destroyed' in decompression chambers. The Nice Mayor's adjoint for animal issues has, interestingly enough, found no conflict in also accepting the vice-presidency of one of the local animal protection associations, the largest and richest of which vie with each other for municipal subsidies. Whatever, this victory for pigeons (it has been promised that they will instead be fed contraceptive food, although so far nothing at all has been done) this victory is not a small one and proves (once again) that even the most lackluster associations and municipalities can still, now and then, make progress in their treatment of animals. Well done! But with all the resources at their disposal, it is normal that some useful things should actually come of their work, now and again...

And there is no shortage of useful things that need doing for animals in this city (as can certainly be said of any city anywhere, caught as we all are by the weight of time and gravity in this imperfect world...).

Outside the 'Carré d'Or', which real estate agents have recently dubbed the most luxurious of the shopping and office sectors of central Nice, in a bid to jazz it up and stimulate long sluggish property sales, outside that well-kept, clean, green and spaceous section of the City Center, the rest of us, the 'locals' (whether French or ex-pat) have to deal with potholes in the roads and sidewalks, the never-ending garbage strewn about (despite frequent reminders that this encourages the rat population), dog turds, double and even triple parking, as well as parking directly on the sidewalks, obliging pedestrians to take to the gutters, as a regular way of life. All this is sometimes referred to as a 'Latin lack of discipline' (usually accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders, for to try to change it is considered hopeless). In the summertime, when temperatures rise and the tourists arrive in their gas-guzzling cars, all this will lead to not only air and street polution, but also to mycosis which passing dogs, and probably cats, too, pick up on their paws from walking in germ-infested contamination. Personally, I suspect that the source is often specifically pigeon excrement, so I avoid letting my dogs walk anywhere near it, although this is difficult. The last few years, which have been exceptionally dry, saw our ration of streetwashings (done in the very early mornings by men wearing rubber aprons and hoses) reduced to well less than necessary to maintain hygene on the sidewalks.

The first time one of my dogs caught mycosis (fungal infection), I didn't know what it was and didn't even notice until it had traveled up her legs and attacked her mouth. She was, as a result, horribly swollen and deformed around the lips from licking her sore paws, clearly in pain and exhausted by the slightest physical effort. Getting rid of mycosis once it has gotten that bad is not an easy affair, so I have had to learn prevention. At the first sign of red or pink on the underside of the paws, or between the pads (which should be checked regularly), I dunk the whole paw in diluted hydrogen peroxide (which is, by the way, one of the most effective and cheapest antiseptics in existence), and, possibly, by an additional dabbing with betadine cream (it's okay if the dog licks this off, but try to keep it on for at least five minutes, while the betadine does its germ-killing job).

But back to the dinky streets of Nice... Last December, a friend of mine, another American ex-pat, was hurrying along on one of the better sidewalks in the Center, outside the Carré d'Or, when her foot got caught on something. She went down like a chopped tree, her right shoe stopped short on the edge of one of the sidewalk's concrete blocks that had cracked and sunk down, while the rest of her was still moving forward. Everything happened so fast, she didn't have time to put her arms out to break her fall. The caught foot twisted her body slightly to the left as she fell, thus exposing her right hipbone and neatly fracturing it when she hit the sidewalk. The result was emergency surgery, putting in pins and a plate to hold the two pieces together while they heal, along with a long convalesence involving wheelchair, crutches, and more medicine than she nomally takes in a score of years. This had, of course, a negative effect on her personal as well as professional well-being, one aspect of which was lost revenue during her sick days. Well, she has just been informed by the municipality that it is not responsible for her accident, sunken block in the sidewalk notwithstanding, as she has to look where she puts her feet! Applying this principal would oblige all who live in or who visit Nice to constantly keep their eyes fixed on the city's decaying walkways, which is, of course, ridiculous. So, in other words, pedestrians here have to take their chances on something similar happening to them... She would like a look at the statistics on accidents similar to her own, but who keeps them, and who will give them to her? Thus she is obliged to swallow this injustice and its consequences, just as your average Nice people have to swallow the same injustice when it happens to them. And such things do happen to them, all the time... This way, we ex-pats are learning to better understand the French mentality in regard to the cavalier attitude of their authorities and the resentment this breeds. The 'petit bourgeoisie', which ran off the monarchy and the aristocracy during the Revolution, just took their place instead, and have ruled ever since with the same elitist attitude towards the common people, making the same mistakes their predecessors made, thus building up a simmering magma of resentments over injustice, privilege and corruption...

Is it possibly true, as Trotsky paused to wonder an instant in the 200 kilometer per hour pace with which he wrote The History of the Russian Revolution, that the vast majority of humans will never learn to use the one ace that evolution has given our species for survival in this world : the brain? That the majority of individuals of our species will always look for others to do their thinking for them, thus inevitably exposing themselves to manipulation and exploitation? And the doom of democracy?

In that case, all the efforts of the enlightened of our species over the centuries, and the millennia, to bring the human race up to its potential, have been for naught... Or else, as some illuminaries suggest, our destination may not be of this world and, as we are all just passing through and none of us are going to stay, perhaps the point of our existence is simply learning lessons, each on his own level, while we are here. Be that as it may, those who would follow in the footsteps of the enlightened and the illuminaries cannot turn their backs on the mass of suffering humanity, however hopelessly permanent its immaturity seems to be, nor either look away from the suffering humanity causes the other creatures of our world. For the consumer society's elite sees animals and animal exploitation as just another means by which to divest the common people (us!) of the fruits of their labors.

That 'the people' carry no more weight than the animals with the so-called elite is nowhere more obvious than in the elite's propensity or tolerance of paedophilia... A new and more profound study of the link between animal abuse and paedophilia is long overdue, in my opinion... But let us note that President Sarkozy chose a self-avowed paedophile to be the country's present minister of culture... even praising him for his 'courage' in making his 'weakness' known (he wrote a book on the subject). And, once again, the French people have to stuff their feelings about this... Not a murmer! Not a ripple! Let them eat cake! But for how long? (Any American who would like to believe that paedophilia in the ruling elite is limited to French society should read the very recently published book, The Franklin Scandal, to open their eyes to this incredible evil and betrayal by authority in our own Home of the Brave and Land of the Free, where the so-called 'common' people still try, as they do here in France, to raise their children with decent values.)

France's recent years of drought have been washed away this winter and spring by rain which never ends, and temperatures well below the normal. On one rare sunny break in the clouds, in April, my friend with the mending hip went, walking with her cane, to sit a few moments in the neighborhood park with her dog, an old German Shepherd who will never run again in this life, and who is chronically fearful from years of belonging to an SDF ('sans domicile fixe', or homeless person) when he must have regularly had the piss and vinegar beat out of him. To say he is fearful is an understatement. He is too anxious to wander off on his own. Well, she let him off his leash so that he could sit on the grass near her bench, which attracked a duo of municipal policewomen descending on her on the run with an already filled out packet of tickets made out to 'pedestrian' for the new infraction of not keeping one's dog on a leash (let us note that the police do not try to hand these out to SDFs, whose dogs are never on leashes, but only to solid citizens capable of paying the hefty fines that go along with the infraction). This is the latest of infractions that rake in money for our needy municipality. When she tried to protest, my friend was told, 'Speak correctly or we will be even more tough on you!' The policewoman must not have liked my friend's accent... Actually, that was probably a phrase taught her in Police School and used despite its inappropriateness to the situation. The ticket, for a few minutes of sitting in the sun, cost her 68€. But if she had, as she never does, walking with a cane or not, left one of her dog's turds on the sidewalk, she would not have had a ticket, as that infraction is not, at the moment, 'in' with the local police.

One of the most publicized incidents of our spring here was the fishing out of the Mediterranean in April, by the French equivalent of the Coast Guard, of an 80-kilo wild boar (or wild sow, to be precise). The story enchanted the readers of the local paper, which carried color photos of the exploit, as the lady boar tried to make these oafs understand that she wanted to be left alone. The men of the Coast Guard apparently magnanimously believed that they were rescuing the lady, although this idea was contested by a number of wildlife experts who contend that she was certainly swimming towards the Lehrens Islands off the coast of Cannes, and that she was perfectly capable of getting there on her own, and that the men of the Coast Guard should not have interferred. These soft reproaches and the public's expressions of charmed wonder at the incident turned into a full chorus of shock, outrage and indignaton when it was shortly afterwards revealed that some authority (no one has yet owned up to the decision) subsequently decided to get rid of the lady boar by shooting her, her species having recently been officially declared 'pests' because of their propensity, in the more rural sections of town, to root up gardens as they search for food (boars are vegetarians and love getting into vegetable gardens, but can be dangerous if they feel they or their young are threatened). As boar meat is also a prize of the hunters in our region, we can wonder if the lady didn't end up on someone's dinnertable. And that may be the real point of the decision to shoot her.

I am waiting for the day when some species physically stronger than our own decides that humans taste good, for perhaps at last our fellows to learn some empathy...

But the history of society's attitude towards animals is a long study in the lack of empathy...

Our wet spring has now drawn to an equally damp conclusion, with a rare-locally event in favor of animals. A long-time local environmental activist, Christian Razeau (pronounced RAZZO) (whose great virtue is to be an independent and diplomatic organizer, outside the petty squabbling of the local animal defense associations), called for animal activists to demonstrate by marching around the city center, to demand:

an end to the summer abandoning of pets, as people go off on vacations (actually, there are laws against abandoning pets, but they are among those which are not taken seriously by authorities and so are never enforced...)

a campaign of neutering, to reduce and control the city's stray cat population (some mayors of surrounding communities have already voted themselves responsible for the food, neutering and vet care of the stray cats in their commune, but not our needy Nice municipality)

an end to the recent decision to forbid the city's parks to dogs, and the recent campaign of systematically giving out tickets for dogs not on leashes

a secure and clean section of the city's beaches reserved for dogs

no more tolerance for SDFs begging with animals (an effective device to touch the hearts of passersby)

an end to the city's acceptance of circuses in town with wild animals.

In this city where such demonstrations for animals never take place, based on the rule that local people who defend animals do not demonstrate, Christian was nonetheless able to rally, this past Saturday, June 19, around 200 people for a rousing jaunt around the city center, down to the beachfront, then back again, to the calls of :

Animals are not objects!

In Nice we move for animals!

Look us up on Daily Motion video search : Manifestation Animaux, Nice (Christian is the darkhaired man with the bullhorn).

All this is quite inspiring, but, at the same time, it is difficult to forget that in just the last week of unseasonable weather, with heavy rains that washed out parts of the Var Department, just next to ours, twenty-five people (the count so far) have lost their lives to flooding, while no authority has yet bothered to put out the number of animals drowned, or animal shelters washed out. Scenes of the desolation for these poor prisoners wading in deep water inside their compounds, have made the rounds on internet, reminding the rest of us of all that needs doing.

Enough to keep us busy for the rest of our lives!