Jonathan Kemp; A naturalist in the south of France

                                                                                  Captured Desman, Fédération Aude Claire   In the cold, clear streams of the higher altitudes of the Pyrenees there lives a strange little creature that is rarely seen; I have never seen it for certain, although perhaps I caught a glimpse of a dark swimming underwater shape one day after a storm; it could have been washed away from its normal habitat in the river’s torrential waters, and ended up near the Mill in our stream.   Almost as bizarre as the duck bill platypus ( Fr. Ornithorynque), the Pyrenean Desman (Fr. Desman des Pyrénées ) is cross between a mole (Fr. Taupe), a water rat ( Fr. rat d’ea...