Let's go fly a kite

You might think that nothing would shock me anymore around here. The saying still waters run deep could have been designed for Bovinia, where the apparent tranquil exterior masks a myriad of strange goings-on, both inside and out. Firstly I can testify to the fact that the wine industry is thriving here. A short trip to the bottle bank this morning confirmed that not only CG and I are relying on a bottle or two of something to stave off the freezing boredom of winter. And as for outside - how about people who take their pet eagle out for a quick fly before dark? Yes, it's true. I was picking my way along an icy road when I saw what appeared to be a person flying a kite, or at least trying to get the kite up in the air; you know, that way you have to kind of throw it upwards until it finds an air current and takes off. It wasn't much of a kite, I thought to myself, rather dark and shabby and flopping about a bit. When it did eventually take off, though, I realised that it was none other than an extremely large bird of prey, which circled around a bit, dive-bombed once or twice, then flew back to its owner, who was swinging some piece of dead animal on a rope. I tried not to stare too much as there was a scary little man, clearly an accomplice of the eagle person, standing by a rusty VW polo smoking a cigarette. He glared as I ran past, as if defying me to so much as raise an eyebrow at something that, for most of us anyway if you don't live in a falconry, was quite unusual. I couldn't help but notice that there was no cage of any kind in the car - presumably the eagle sat on the back seat or flapped about in the boot.

Fun though it would have been to watch the pair of them wrangle their pet into the car I proceeded onwards, as the sun had already gone behind the mountains and the streetlights were coming on. The last thing I wanted to was to get mixed up in some sort of pre-prandial brawl on my way past the Alpenhof pub. It is a well-known fact that some people here start their daily Jägermeister consumption just after breakfast. They are, therefore, spoiling for a fight by six p.m.