Always walk with a woman – a viper will bite her first

TO DETER tourists, especially German campers, our neighbour Massot had nailed up a series of unwelcoming messages around his land, warning of poisonous snakes: ‘Attention! Viperes!’

I asked Massot if there really were vipers in the Luberon, and he shook his head at yet another example of the ignorance of foreigners.

‘Eh oui,’ he said, ‘if you’re bitten you need to get to a doctor within 45 minutes, or else . . . ’

He pulled a dreadful face, head to one side, tongue lolling from the side of his mouth.

‘They say that when a viper bites a man, the man dies.

‘But when a viper bites a woman,’ — he leaned forward and waggled his eyebrows — ‘the viper dies.’ Massot snorted with amusement and offered me one of his fat, yellow cigarettes.

The Luberon viper, according to Professor Massot, will normally avoid humans, and will attack only if provoked.

When this happens, Massot’s advice was to run in zig-zags, because an enraged viper can sprint — in short, straight bursts on level ground — as fast as a running man.

Massot’s advice was simple. ‘Always take a woman with you. They can’t run as fast as men, and the viper will catch them first.’