Thieving Magpie?

No. It wasn't a thieving magpie that took my mate Raymond's ball, but a thieving coypu.

We have quite a few families of them around the lakes on our local golf course at Cap d'Agde. They are used to us golfers wandering the fairways and hitting our balls into their water but whereas they graze on our fairways, it's much harder for us to get our golf balls back from their water .

This time however, Raymond laid up short of the lake, but in amongst the grazing coypu. One of them obviously took exception to havhing his mid afternoon snack interrupted and picked up Raymond's ball, put it in it's mouth and carried it into the water.

I am not sure whether it was Raymond's cry of anguish or my bellow of laughter that caused it to drop the ball in the shallows, but as you can see, Raymond did manage to retrieve it.

Gent that I am, I did allow him to play on without any penalty.