On a mission

Now you have to promise not to laugh, because I know I did. You see, my treasure~dear husband, did some research on the internet on how to scare away wild boars. He told me that they don't like noises such as fire crackers, lights or even flashy things. You know what really scares them off ....drum roll please....wolf urine! Yes, my friends we had us our very own genuine all the way from the USA, wolf pee! 

Apparently, wild boars are petrified of wolves which haven't lived in Japan for a very long time, but anyway it was worth a try because what they were doing to the land and our water flow was damaging. In other words we would give anything a try once!

The idea is that you fill these little cups with wolf pee and attach them around the perimeter of your property, therefore warning them to stay away for exactly 33 days. So this is what we did before leaving Oba chan chi's that weekend.
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But then we had us some visitors..... 

No not the hairy, short legged kind, but the two legged fluorescent orange jacket kind in the form of hunters!

Sorry this photo isn't the best. Upon meeting these men we got the idea that although this hunting club weren't an unfriendly bunch, they did have a job to do and were quite professional about it. They were armed with their long range shotguns and their trusty dogs sporting some loud bells and a GPS.  

It was quite the event in the area for a lot of the locals coming out to take a peek. As we stood there we heard the two dogs running through the bamboo forest with the trees rustling, as they madly ran catching the wild boars scent. Of course at this point we were thinking that we may have messed up these working dogs ability to smell a wild boar and instead go for the wolf pee! But as we watched, one dog was completely off the radar and lost from his buddy. He ran over to trees where the wild boars has been digging up and took no notice or even a sniff of our wolf pee. The hunters were calling out, "hai, hai" and the dogs bells were rattling  away and then three loud gunshots rang out through the valley. Did they hit a boar? Who knows, but it was kind of both exciting and then sad to hear.