With my mind drifting to breakfast, I suddenly hear something rustling in the bushes in front of me. My first idea; deer, but then something big, dark brown with a mean looking head jumps out, crosses the trail only 20 meters in front of me, and runs away through the forest. Closely followed by a second wild boar. I stop, stare and only when they are gone I breathe a sigh of relief.

Yes, I know there are wild boar here in the forest in Bergeijk. I even regularly see the traces in the field behind our garden. And I know the hunters go out every autumn to shoot some of them. I just have never seen them. Neither when we were living in Spain where they came out at night to destroy our land.

Asterix and Obelix

They are big, they are fast, they are ugly. Sorry to say. And they do look like the wild boar in the comics of Asterix and Obelix.

The path I am running on, is one I recently discovered. It’s an deserted path, as so many paths around here. Most people stick to the wider lanes in the forest. At least, I never see anybody else running on these little paths, and I do see many people walking on the wider ones.

Spotting deer

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy with that. It means that even after sunrise I still can see deer when I go out for a run. For a long time I thought we only had 3 deer around, as I had never seen more. However on one of the last runs before Spa, that Sara and I did, we discovered a group of eight. And this little path is the path we mostly see them. That’s why it’s our favorite.

40 kilometers per hour

If that’s still the case, after today, I wonder. I mean the wild boar were running away from me, but what if they have babies? They look like big strong mother f**** and they can outrun me easily as they can run 40 kilometers per hour.

So yes, it’s pretty cool to see wild boar, but maybe next time from a bigger distance, or just in another Asterix and Obelix comic book.