Croque Vaches

Mid-July, Aimy and I were able to watch another traditional event in the south west of France. It goes by many names - Intervache, toroball - but in Parentis-en-Born, the city where we saw the show, and the one where I lived for 8 months in 2007-8, it is called the Croque Vaches (the Cow Crunch).

The Croque Vaches is a variant of the Course Landaise, an ancient form of bullfighting in Gascony, the area where we live. Bullfighting without bloodshed has been part of local culture for hundreds of years, and several versions of the Course Landaise are performed here throughout the summer. I hope to see the original version at some point in my life, but this July, Aimy and I went to see the very first Croque Vaches of the season. In this event, two teams of amateurs from two different cities (usually the host city against a visiting team) face off in several games throughout the course of the evening, but the games involve a vachette - a young cow with horns bred especially for the games. Since the Croque Vaches is for amateurs, the vachettes are young and quite light compared to the bulls used in the Course Landaise.

Though there are many different games perfomed during these events, the evening where Aimy and I went with friends showcased some of the crowd's favourites, such as the banana tree, where one member of each team had to run across the arena, climb a pole with an umbrella on top and try to grab one of the bananas hanging from the umbrella and take it back across the arena to his teammate, who had to eat it, and do so as many times as possible during the 5 minute game... all without getting hit by the vachette. Of course, there are people on his team that try to distract the animal and get him to charge away from the banana grabber, but there are also the opposing team members who try to send the vachette towards the other team.

The neutral 'rodeo clowns' parading
before the start of the games.
Just like in a rodeo, they are there
to help distract the animals and
keep the participants from getting
injured

The two team leaders introducing
their teams and the first event

Here comes the vache!

Go Red Team! Climbing the pole to
grab a banana

Running away...

This first game was followed by a series of other games, where the team members had to run through the pool in the middle, grab a big tin can and flatten it with a hammer enough so that it would fit through the slot in the box on the opposite side of the arena. The team to get the most cans in the box by the end of the allotted time won the most points.

You can just see them trying
to flatten the cans on stumps on the
far side of the arena

There were several other games that I enjoyed. For exaple, one really thrilling game had pairs of players had a piece of fabric resembling the toreador's cape and had to try to get the vachette (a much smaller and younger one than in these pictures) to run between them under the cape. Another one had one player in a plastic oil drum holding a huge hoop, while teammates would try to tempt the animal into running through it, with each passage of the bull through the hoop counting for one point.

One of the cows wouldn't come out of
the pool, so they had to send the
rancher out with the mama cow to
try to tempt him out of the arena!

Trying to decide what to do...

There were also a few games where the public could participate, with and without animals. One of them had young women come into the arena... they were asked to run across the arena (through the pool, of course!) and, once on the other side, put their forehead against a pole standing upright on the ground, and turn around in a circle ten times, and then carry a pie plate full of whipped cream back across the arena to their teammates. I laughed so hard I almost cried... those poor volunteers! They also had a game where they attached a bow to a cow's head and offered prizes to the member of the public who was brave and agile enough to take it off... and that's when you realize just how good the 'amateurs' who are part of these Intervache teams really are, because you are really a heartbeat away from getting seriously injured at one of these events.

Though Aimy was very tired - we didn't get home until after 11:30 - she enjoyed seeing the cows and going out with me and my friends and their children. The Croque Vaches is a big part of life here in our area and I'm sure we'll be going to see one again soon.