Guys Try To Save Birds, Get Attacked By Half-Nude Shovel Dude

<p><a href="https://www.lpo.fr/actualites/des-dizaines-de-milliers-de-pinsons-tues-illegalement-les-landes-territoire-de-non-droit" target="_blank"> LPO</a> </p>
<p><a href="https://www.lpo.fr/actualites/des-dizaines-de-milliers-de-pinsons-tues-illegalement-les-landes-territoire-de-non-droit" target="_blank"> LPO</a> </p>

An effort to stop bird poaching in France ended in a surreal scene this week after an angry farmer in his underwear began striking conservationists with a shovel, The Independent reports.

On Monday, members of the League for the Protection of Birds (LPO) took journalists to a farm near the village of Audon to disable illegal finch traps when the undies-clad assailant emerged from a nearby home.

gettyimages.com/detail/496371440">View image | gettyimages.com In a series of pictures by photographer Gaizka Iroz, the surly shoveler can be seen hitting LPO President Allain Bougrain-Dubourg with the garden tool before throwing it at another man.

gettyimages.com/detail/496372038">View image | gettyimages.com "It was very violent," Bougrain-Dubourg later told reporters. "Around four or five us got whacked three or four times with a spade."

gettyimages.com/detail/496371394">View image | gettyimages.com In addition to the shovel attack, The Guardian reports the bird lovers had their tires slashed and their camera equipment snatched, and were assaulted by a second farmer brandishing a hoe. That man, however, was fully clothed.

According to the LPO, trapping the protected songbirds is a crime punishable by up to a year in prison, but tens of thousands of the finches are still illegally killed and eaten by hunters each year.

French media sources say the organization now plans to sue the unnamed farmer for assault, use of prohibited traps and destruction of protected species, while the jockey-wearing jouster intends to sue the activists for trespassing. By Monday afternoon, however, French social media users had already collected their own settlement.