Badgers

I first came across badgers when I read, or was read Bill badger in the Rupert Bear stories; Bill was Rupert’s great friend, and he always seemed a nice, adventurous sort of young brock. In  ‘The Wind in the Willows’ Badger was rather an intimidating character, but brave and strong and a great defender of the more timid animals. There were various other badgers who cropped up as characters in children’s stories I read but the next badger I remember is the anarchic character in ‘Bodger and Badger’ the children’s TV series of the 1990’s. Badger loved mashed potato and there was plenty of it flung about with great glee in every programme

As for real badgers, I had never seen a live one until we moved to Somerset nearly a dozen years ago. There were plenty poor creatures seen dead by the road, but I never saw a live one until we realised there is a sett nearby.  We’re not sure where it is but in the evening we would sometimes see them scampering along the little walk way between our house and our neighbours, the long claws clicking on the pavement. We thought, oh how cute! And indeed they are… we saw a young fellow the other night scuttle across the road in front of us as we went down to the Dolphin.

However badgers have another darker side. Many farmers believe they spread tuberculosis to cattle and want them culled, either by poisoning, gassing or shooting. Cows are regularly tested for TB and if they show the slightest trace of the awful disease then they have to be put down, so understandably farmers want to eliminate the risk by getting rid of other animals ie badgers, who are thought to spread it. On the other side of the argument, wildlife experts think that killing badgers in one area would simply lead to other badgers moving into the unoccupied territory. They recommend vaccination, but obviously it is pretty difficult to effectively vaccinate wild animals.

We also see another side to the feisty little stripy creatures in our garden; in a prominent position on our front lawn is a beautiful smoke-tree  or cotinus. For some reason our local badgers love digging round the roots – I guess for grubs and worms, but they make a right old mess! great holes all over the lawn. I guess we could tolerate that begrudgingly, but the story gets worse. The naughty badgers then use the convenient holes as a toilet… yes a toilet, ugh! Yuk! No!

I have no idea what we can do but we’ve had various suggestions, including leading them away to somewhere else with a trail of peanuts (but where… a neighbour’s garden? I don’t think so!) or  orange peel and other unmentionable deterrents… I somehow think the badgers will continue to be tempted by the tasty treats they find beneath our tree.