Badgers are delightful animals… we occasionally see them in our village, usually trotting down the little alley next to our house as if they are on their way to or on their way home from the pub, their toenails clicking on the path. They run at quite a lick and never stop to say hello, or even to give us a bit of a look. They are cute, that’s for sure, but they are also a real pest. For the last two years they have dug up our front garden, no doubt looking for worms and grubs… which is annoying but bearable, but then they use the holes they’ve dug as a toilet, which is really disgusting and unpleasant.
I’m not going to enter into the debate about whether they should be culled, as cattle farmers advocate, fearing that they bring TB to their herds, but it is annoying that they are protected to the extent that they can do considerable damage to people’s livelihoods… and unfortunately their activities do not just affect the living. This is the notice on the gate to a beautiful churchyard we visited today: 
Lois Elsden 