Having spent many years out in the countryside, and witnessed all sorts of strange behaviour, what really worries me is that these people aren't actually stupid. We who are outdoors people seem to assume that everybody has a basic knowledge of the outdoors, the sort of stuff we have "always" known, and "everybody" knows.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of the population, who spend almost all of their lives in urban areas, don't know these things. Their knowledge of the countryside is limited to what they see on TV, or read in the odd newspaper holiday article or tourist brochure, and they think the outdoors is a sort of Emmerdale-styled theme park.
There are plenty of people, mainly young, who do not associate "food" with the countryside and "farming". Meat is something that comes in plastic packets from the supermarket, just like any other manufactured product, and is thought of as such. The link between "pig" and "bacon" is something they don't understand, or prefer not to think about because it's messy and "nasty".
To most kids, a farm is a place you visit on a school trip, and see cuddly little lambs and cute little piglets, not an open air food factory. My eight year old was the only one in his class who knew that milk comes from cows, not Asda. He was also the only one who had actually seen a live fox in the wild. The rest of the class knew absolutely nothing about the countryside, and a couple actually thought "Wind in the Willows" was a true story.
The real problem is that these people aren't stupid, but have a totally false impression of what to expect in the countryside, and when the main source of information is wildlife documentaries and the odd tourist board advert, can we really be surprised?
Alan
