Introduction: First written in May 2007, but in view of recent government announcements, once again sadly rather topical!
The Badgers of Houndscroft Wood.
The real interest in watching the badgers of Houndscroft Wood started as an antidote to the somewhat aggressive Ninja Turtle craze, that seemed likely to pull in my young and impressionable son. We felt that real life animals, in their wild home, were preferable to kicking, stick wheedling, bandana wearing, humanised turtles.
The badger sett is some way off a steep road that runs from the valley bottom towards the limestone common above, in a characteristic woodland boundary where it fronts the pasture below. This allows the badgers access the woodland floor and the grazing pastures beyond and here lies the inherent problem; can badgers and cattle live side by side in harmony?
To sit quietly on an early spring evening, as the sun sets and any birds that our progress through the wood had disturbed, resettled onto their roosts, is a magical experience. Most memorable were the newly born cubs, who having been cooped up all day, exploded into the early evening, intent on snorting out the dust from their lungs and vigorously shaking the earth from their coats, and with little regard to any lurking danger. That is until the older and wiser adults, issued warnings and the occasional cuff to the wayward youngsters to remind them of the need for care.
However, not everyone thought as we did, with the badger having being persecuted for many years, despite their ancient setts having been occupied for many many years, certainly well before the loud protesters calling for their demise. The problem was that for many there was the feeling that badgers were responsible for the spread of tuberculosis in cattle, causing them and others in the herd to be slaughtered. Imagine then our horror, when the Ministry of Agriculture announced that the Houndscroft Wood sett, “our sett,” was to be gassed. Heated correspondence followed in the local newspaper, but to no avail, the Ministry had decreed and the Ministry knows best, so the fateful day arrived when the defenceless creatures who gave so many a good deal of pleasure, were to perish.
Fortunately, the b…..s didn’t get all the badgers, and the sett although depleted, was able to re-colonise and live to fight another day, quite fortuitous when people who matter, are beginning to question whether it is the badgers who infest the cattle or the other way around, let’s hope that all those badgers who died in dark underground chambers, choked by an invisible killer did not die in vain.
Roger M. Higgs
May 2007