The Story of the Sculpture "The Fox and the Crane"

This story for me began in early childhood (I think I was about 5 or 6 years old), when we drove from our grandparents' home from the direction of Kārsava towards Riga along the so-called Ostrova highway (now European route E262, Latvian road A13). When Mum said the turn to Rēzekne was coming up, I would eagerly and carefully search the left roadside with my eyes, because that was where a brightly painted sculpture was supposed to flash by - the fox and the crane.

Both figures had stepped out of a folk tale and depicted the moment when the crane was treating its godmother the fox from a tall narrow carafe, but the fox could not poke its blunt snout inside and remained hungry. This was the crane's way of repaying the fox for treating it from shallow flat plates, from which the crane with its long beak had been unable to take anything and had also gone hungry. Such is the moral of the tale - what you give comes back to the giver.

I don't know why, but we had never stopped by the roadside at this sculpture in childhood, got out of the car, and examined it up close. It was always viewed through the window of a Soviet-era car. We enjoyed it in passing.

A fair amount of time has passed since then. No one has lived in the grandparents' house for a long time now. We stop in on rare occasions to enjoy the many colourful and juicy apple varieties in the orchard my grandfather once planted. The Soviet era too can only be read about in books, like a fairy tale with a moral.

This autumn we decided, while driving to Riga now in a modern car with a basket full of gathered apples in the boot, to track down this sculpture - which I had told Ēriks about as a special memory of my childhood. And we saw it!

A little worn by now and missing a few details, but just as interesting as ever. Seemingly made of reinforced concrete and painted, on a solid concrete base - the crane is still treating the fox from the tall pitcher.

Coordinates of the sculpture's location - 56.6343938, 27.4719583 - outside a populated area, village of Peščanka, Bērzgale Parish, Rēzekne Municipality.

If anyone knows who created this sculpture, or when and why it was erected, please get in touch! Help me tell this story in full!