On a beautiful, sunny morning in early summer, with dew still glistening on the leaves and the air filled with the scent of damp earth, we went into the woods with our little ones. The little ones were so keen to show us just how well their tyres gripped the rock faces and what seemingly insurmountable obstacles they could conquer.
Whilst we were encouraging the little rascals to attempt ever more daring manoeuvres, we spotted a strange creature on one of the slopes. Until then, we’d only known of this creature from stories our parents had told us in our earliest childhood, and we’d always thought to ourselves, with a broad grin on our faces, ‘You’d think I still believe in Father Christmas.’ But there it was, running ahead of us: the Hanghuhn. Completely fascinated, we watched the bizarre spectacle and didn’t realise that one of our vehicles was heading straight towards the Hanghuhn. Probably completely bewildered by the strange noise behind it, the Hanghuhn turned round and, because its legs were far too short, lost its balance and tumbled sideways down the slope into the depths.
We immediately scrambled down the slope to take a closer look at this rather strange creature and, if necessary, to help it. The poor animal was lying somewhat disoriented by a small fir tree, its feathers quivering, and looked at us fearfully. It had unfortunately become entangled in some branches and was apparently unable to free itself. Whilst one of us distracted it from the front, another freed its leg. The rock partridge immediately took flight, but its anatomy meant it kept tumbling to the ground. One of us – a truly experienced outdoorsman – grabbed the thoroughly distraught rock partridge and carried it back to the slope from which we’d caused it to fall.
Back in its natural habitat, the partridge immediately ran off across the slope without even looking back once. Well, it would probably have tumbled down again anyway. We drove on. Even now, whenever we drive through this area, we see this partridge doing a few brisk laps around the slope, greeting us and clucking cheerfully. We decided that this might be the last surviving specimen of the slope grouse and that it should be protected. And so our strange little community came into being...
One of the group even claimed that the Latin name was “gallus gallus conatus”, but was that all just a hunter’s tall tale?
But actually, it doesn’t really matter, as long as you keep a bit of imagination alive.