While with my brother we were on the hunt for the field mice that have taken residence in the darker corners of our house, and while we were trying to ascertain if it is a hedgehog or something larger that has been raiding our trash bin, the local news informed us that the number of sheep and fallow deer attacked by wolves in our area is increasing.

The countryside is going wild.

And it is not a rewilding plan, the conscious effort on the part of humans to bring back the natural environment to try and co-exist.
It’s a strange, harsher and more random phenomenon.
It feels like a side-effect of the financial depression that is strangling the rural areas – fields go unattended, farms are abandoned or repossessed by the banks when the mortgages are defaulted, and the wild comes forward to occupy the vacated spaces.

And because I am strange, and because I am a writer and I think in stories, I tell myself this is a nice set up for a game or a series of stories. What else is “coming back” as the countryside reverts to wilderness?
What of the old traditions and superstitions, of the fabled “masche”, the hags that haunt these hills, what of the strange practices and the old legends?
Good inspiration, but all things considered, living through it might prove a little too interesting for my tastes.