What a surprise! Friends just sent me these photos taken the other day outside of the Louvre, next to the Jardin des Tuileries. The company responsible for maintaining the gardens and lawns of the Louvre now uses goats to keep the grass tidy in the steep ditch that runs along the periphery of the park. The small, long-haired goats are a breed found on France's western coasts. Called les chèvres des fossés, their number has dwindled over the years to only a few hundred. Also known as la vache des pauvres, the poor people's cow, these milk-producing goats, typically belonged to people who did not own grazing land. Property owners would allow them to tether the goats on difficult and rough terrains to crop the grass.
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| Photos by John Desjardin |
Goats have to graze where they are tethered. This is an expression of resignation to one's situation; when necessity obliges, one must accept the circumstances in which one finds oneself.
Vocabulary
brouter: to graze on, to graze
attacher: to fasten, to attach, to tie up
le gazon: grass
la pelouse: lawn
une fossé: a ditch
tondre: to mow
©2012 P.B. Lecron
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