I decide I can’t just go visit someone I don’t know, so that night, I call pops on the phone instead. I don’t want to go there twice in the same day, and they’d probably tell me to stay for dinner again too. Not that I don’t want dinner, I just don’t want to be a bother.
“…Ah, neighbors…”
I’ve never heard him be evasive.
“Hey, are they Shouhei’s neighbors?”
I can hear him and his wife talking, and then she takes the phone.
“Shouhei?”
“Yes.”
I’ve actually heard before that my neighbors on both sides became the owners of those mountains recently.
In the east, it’s a young woman, and the west, a kind of gaudy looking man, I heard.
It’s surprising that they are living on mountains like me.
“The young lady in the east moved there about two years ago. And the man in the west about three. Both mountains have signs warning of dangerous animals, and apparently they moved here because something happened in the city. Maybe you can get their contacts when you come to the village.”
So basically, don’t just go to other people’s mountains. They have their own things going on.
“Warning of dangerous animals… Are those signs on every mountain?”
“…No, I’ve never seen them around here. Apparently there are bears and boars though. Ah, Shouhei… That’s hard to say, can I call you Shou? There might be bears in your mountains, so watch out for that.”
“…Yes.”
I was warned of that when I bought them.
Bears are dangerous animals too, even if a lot of people don’t understand how ferocious they are because they’re used to teddy bears and seeing them in the zoo. I remember reading about a bear attack in Hokkaido known as Sankebetsu brown bear incident. It made my skin crawl.
If there really are bears, I need to do something about it. Maybe I should’ve gotten a hunting license before coming here.
As always, I underestimated the mountains.
I finish the phone call, and feel kind of down, but the chickens crowd around me like they’re consoling me.
“Pochi, Tama, Yuma… You’re all so nice… There might be bears around, so be careful.”
I respond to myself in my head, asking how exactly they’re supposed to be careful, as I pet them gently. These three like to keep themselves clean, and wash themselves with dust and also with water outside. And Yuma even jumps into the bath with me. At first I was worried that it was too hot, but it seems to like it, so I’ve been calling it every night.
By the way, I tried calling Pochi and Tama too, but they looked at me like they were thinking ‘what’s this guy on about?’. That hurt.
“Harmful animals, and neighbors… I guess I should deal with the harmful animals first.”
Apparently some people in the village have hunting licenses, but less and less every year, because they’re getting old.
Getting a hunting license costs money, and even then, it’s not a guarantee. Then there’s the fact that hunting rifles have to be looked after, so people tend to use traps. It’s not just about pointing and shooting, like I thought.
Deer aren’t dangerous, but they’re still harmful, and have been multiplying with each passing year. When I think of deer, I think of the ones in the Nara park, but they have to be dealt with because they come down from the mountain and wreck fields.
Apparently they tend to live more in forests and fields, rather than mountains, but they’re around here too. But there’s a hunting season when they can be caught, and doing it outside of that season gets you a fine. I don’t really know a lot about it, but it sounds like a pain.
Incidentally, that hunting season around here is from November to March, but it varies depending on the municipality.
“Ah, I should’ve asked more about those harmful animals…”
There’s so much I don’t know, that I don’t even know what to ask.
“If they damage the field, that’d be trouble…”
Living on a mountain really is close to survivalism.
But there’s no point in wrecking my head about it, so I go to sleep.
◇ ◇ ◇
The next morning, the chickens eat stuff like vegetable scraps, and take off running.
“Oh, so much energy…”
Living on a mountain costs money too, and has its problems. I have to look after the trees, watch the river, and go around checking if no one’s wrecking the mountains. Unlawful dumping has been a problem in recent years, but there aren’t a lot of people around here, so trash isn’t much of a problem presently.
“The mountains themselves are fine, but maybe we should make the borders clearer.”
And maybe it would be good to discuss which owner looks after those areas.
Then I start to get worried, because it’s past noon and the chickens aren’t back yet, but then…
“W-what is that!?”
I go around patrolling the mountain, and when I get back, I see a boar on the ground in front of my house. And three chickens around it.
“…Did you hunt it…?”
I ask reluctantly, and Pochi clucks proudly.
The boar is still alive, but its legs are wounded, so it can’t move.
“Pops! Help!”
What am I supposed to do in this situation? I end up grabbing the phone to talk to him like I’m calling Dor〇mon or something.
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