L’Etoile collision with Bull
One of our guests reported this very special and exciting event, while cruising with us on L’Etoile.
I wish I had a picture. I don’t, you have to try to picture it yourself!
As we arrived in Aigues Mortes to moor for the night, I saw that a bull was loose and running along the park next to the canal. People were chasing and yelling and the horsemen were running up and down to try and head him off and the bull was darting in and out of traffic and down the side of the hill. The shore had small groups of onlookers cheering and yelling. I watched it with interest, meanwhile checking out our mooring spot.
Suddenly the bull plunged into the canal and began to swim towards L’Etoile. It rammed horns-first right into the side of our barge and tried to swim in front of it. I think I yelled something, because suddenly our guests left their lunch and came on deck to see what was going on. I tried to direct captain Christian to miss the bull. Really, I am born on a barge, have been around on barges for all my life, but being broadsided by a bull, that was another first-one!
This is what our guests reported:
‘The bull climbed up out of the canal into a section of the park that was gated on both ends. That meant that the chasers could not get in unless they climbed over the gate. We watched this spectacle take place over the next half hour from the safety of our barges across the canal. The bull was literally a hundred feet from us. We had a front row seat and took a ton of pics.
The boys chased and taunted the bull and scattered to the trees and up onto walls whenever the bull made to chase them. At one point the bull was taunted, bull-fighter-style, by a young man holding something like a cape. The bull fiercely bobbed its head and horns and stomp its hooves in warning to keep your distance.
The police came. They saw the situation and drove off to find tools to dismantle the gate so they could drive a livestock truck into the area and capture the bull. They finally got the gate open. The horsemen came in first riding their proud, gray Arabians. There were eight of them and another dozen or so chasers. They hemmed and hawed and waited for the truck to arrive. Meanwhile the bull was going back and forth and stomping and bobbing and the chasers were taunting and running away.
Finally the trucks came. There were two. They parked side by side right near the edge by the canal. The horses went around the bull and began to herd him towards the trucks. We took bets as to whom would go into the canal first, the bull, the horsemen, or the chasers. Within a minute, with a lot of yelling and horses chasing, the bull came running up one of the ramps of the truck.
They quickly closed it…and that was that.’
