Ariège Mountains; an exchange

Meet my new friends
Here you can exchange your neighbours and your friends (if you have any)  for two sweet-eyed fat brown cows with bells, three fawn furry donkeys, four black Pyrenéen ponies and their newborn foal, a colony of lizards who jump for flies on the veranda windowsill, a host of birds, and a mason bee who stashes pollen balls in the hole in your front door.

You can exchange the distant roar of traffic for the distant roar of the river;  the view over the roofs with wires and satellite dishes for snow peaks and running ragged lines under a wide sky.  At night, swop the orange imposition and sad green of streetlamps for clusters of lights tucked into the mountain face in front of you where houses are hidden, and above it the slightly different dark of the wide sky, where all the stars in the cosmos alighted and hang in juicy drops, and you can go out into the night, and feel the sky fall all around you.

Actual view from our gite

Actual gite, actual weather!

B observing lizards in the panoramic veranda

Fat bottomed cows you make the rocking world go round

Whole cow:  horned and free, when she looks at you, you know you have been looked at

Posing for a still

Free range cow

...three fawn furry donkeys...

Coquette pose, look at the front legs...

...four black Pyrenéen ponies and their newborn foal...the "Cheval de Mérens" is a traditional breed from ancient times in the Ariege Pyrenees, still rare but being reintroduced, known for its hardiness, and its somewhat wild but sweet temperament.    It can be recognised among other things for its 'beard', hair growing behind its cheeks.

The whole extended family checks out the foal situation, mother and foal have been 'helped'  up the mountain to join the others 'chez eux'

I loved watching the group of horses and how they behaved together.  On the day the foal was born, the 3  grown ups  climbed up the steep mountainside and called for the mother, but the foal was too young to manage the climb.  Eventually they abandoned their calling and charged down the hill to join her (R has footage).

The foal ran in the opposite direction, here he is nuzzled back into order

...a colony of lizards who jump for flies on the veranda windowsill...