#for example he runs away to the nearest farm to steal the cow feed (pellets) at feeding time

[hedgehog-moss]

Look, friends.

Do you think this is a post about my adorable baby succulents? No. Look harder.

It's about the GIANT HOLE IN MY FENCE that I had to patch up with cardboard.

I can't blame Pampérigouste for this one; the brutish nature of the damage is not consistent with her usual modus operandi. Pampe outsmarts locks like Arsène Lupin; she doesn't charge at fences like a bull who saw a red cloth. This is Pampe Pondering A Fence Problem:

No, the damage to my fence looked a lot more mindless this time. Boorish. Boar-ish. I'm blaming a boar. A deer would have destroyed the whole thing rather than just the lower half. Note that there is not a single tuft of llama wool on the damaged wire mesh.

(Note no.2: the boar's smile was originally meant to be a tusk but it really just looks like a sardonic smile)

I brought some chicken wire to patch up the hole—but there wasn't enough of it. Then it started raining and I felt persecuted and decided to just cover the hole with cardboard and go have my morning coffee and get back to this later.

This is not an Innocent Pampe post; there is no such thing. My temporary cardboard solution lasted 8 to 10 minutes. I'm not sure exactly when she got out, but by the time I went back outside to repair the fence there was a Pampe-shaped hole in the cardboard.

(Not really; she just kind of lifted or ate a corner then wormed her way through the very small opening. I think.) (See, this is how you recognise a Pampe escape: you're not entirely clear on what went down, you just know there was a llama inside and now there is a llama outside.)

It was still raining and I didn't feel like going after her, plus it felt pointless to bring her back in her pasture before the fence was repaired, so I went in the barn to look for my tools and rummage through leftover pieces of previously-destroyed fences, hoping to find something the right size.

Then I heard Pampelune's hyena shriek, aka the llama alarm call. It was followed by:

horrified chicken screams and frantic feather noises; the soundtrack of a violent fox attack

infuriated barking from Pandolf

very loud panicked braying from Pirlouit

basically, chaos.

I ran outside just in time to see Pampe emerging from the woods at a full gallop, pursued by a bear. I didn't immediately identify the animal that was chasing her as the giant dog that he was, because he was running with a weird gait, with his legs going everywhere like he was frolicking at top speed (I now know that this dog is a puppy that has learnt to run just a few months ago, but that didn't occur to me at the time because this puppy is the size of a calf.)

Pampe was running towards the cardboard through which she had escaped and she managed to squeeze through her small corner hole again (I assume—there were trees blocking my line of sight and I only saw her again once she was in the pasture, running for her life along with the other 2 llamas + donkey.) Meanwhile, the dog didn't see the corner hole and tried to power through the cardboard much like a boar, or was carried away by his momentum and didn't brake in time; I don't know. In any case, when I reached him, he was stuck.

My large piece of cardboard was tied to the fence posts and still holding strong, but the middle was a bit soggy with rain and not too solid, so the dog's head went right through it. The rest of his body didn't.

He could have probably finished breaking the cardboard quite easily, but for some reason he instantly gave up. On life. By the time I got there the dog was half-in and half-out of the pasture and he looked defeated. Which made my piece of cardboard look like a mediaeval beheading apparatus with just a hole for the head.

I went to lock an angry Pandolf in the barn and checked on the chickens along the way (ruffled & offended but fine); I was hoping the dog would figure out how to extricate his head from the cardboard in the meantime. He did not. I tried to call him in a friendly tone (from behind) to encourage him to free his head by stepping back, but the concept of taking a couple of steps backwards in order to extract his head from the hole might as well have been advanced engineering. He clearly had no idea where his head was, where his body was, how to make the two a coherent whole again, and he started whining pitifully.

I untied the rope I had used to attach the cardboard to the fence posts, then wriggled the piece of cardboard a bit to try and free the dog's head. The dog was alarmed by the wriggling and took several steps back—but I didn't manage to hold on to the cardboard so it just moved with the dog. He clumsily ran away, taking the cardboard with him, wearing it around his neck like the world's largest cone of shame.

He immediately got stuck between two trees.

I was starting to find the situation hilarious, but the poor dog did not—he lay down and started making sad broken noises like a malfunctioning dog-robot. He didn't look very threatening but he was still a very big (and stressed) dog so I felt a bit wary of touching his head to help him, and decided to run home to get a box cutter. I figured I could easily rid him of most of the cardboard and leave him with just a soggy cardboard collar that would soon fall apart. I heard my landline phone ringing from afar and ran faster, and it was one of my nearest neighbours, the retired lady who lives on the plateau.

"I've been trying to reach you!! I saw your llama in my garden earlier, I was going to give her a little treat—" (she loves Pampe, for some reason) "—but then my dog saw her too."

I know this woman's dog—he's a tiny thing with fragile nerves who thinks the whole world is out to get him, so I asked anxiously, "Did Pampe scare your dog?" and she said "Oh no! Domino is here with me; but I have a new dog. His name is Texas."

I thought of the gigantic puppy currently sobbing in my woods, held prisoner by two trees, a self-inflicted cone of shame and his total lack of reasoning skills.

"Yes", I said. "I've met Texas."

The old lady asked worriedly if he'd scared Pampe ("Il est un peu zinzin" she said—he's a bit crazy. "I wanted to call him Rex, but then I met him and thought—Texas!!") I told her I was pleased with her dog for scaring Pampe, because she needs to learn that her pasture is her only hope for safety in this cold uncaring world and as soon as she steps out of it she returns to her lowly status as a prey animal. Then I ended the phone call because I was worried both about Texas and about the large hole in my fence. Thankfully all my animals were still terrified and hiding far, far away from Texas.

Texas actually managed to free himself before I attempted to cut the cardboard, but he still thought of me as his saviour and was very happy to follow me through the woods back to his owner's place. Before we left I propped up the cardboard against the damaged fence, and despite the hole in the middle no llamas escaped in my absence; I think the whole area still smelled like Texas and fear.

I'll admit I was initially tempted to leave Texas with his head stuck in the cardboard in a more permanent capacity in order to patch the hole in my fence with this amazing anti-Pampe Cerberus. Like this

(I know this artistic rendering makes my llamas look like frightened carrots and my donkey like a bunny but I will not be taking constructive criticism at this time)