My Brockland Buddies

MY BROCKLAND BUDDIES.
By
Malcolm D. Welshman
900 words

A ball of grey fur shot out of the holly thicket, bounced down the bank and careered into my ankles. Shaken, the two badger cubs sprang apart from their tussle. Piggy black eyes blinked at me, puzzled. Moist grey nostrils quivered, uncertain. At the top of the bank a striped black and white head appeared. There was a warning yelp. Alerted by their mother’s call, the youngsters squeaked in alarm and bolted back to the safety of their sett.
That safety will be compromised if the announcement made by the Government this week comes into force. The go-ahead has been given for two pilot badger culls on farms in the South West next year, using trained marksmen to shoot the animals. If the trials are deemed successful this will mean at least 35.000 badgers will be shot annually in an attempt to halt the spread of TB in cattle. That TB is thought to be caused by contact with infected badgers which led to the slaughter of 25,000 cattle in the past year.
The sett I was watching I’d discovered on a hike across the Blackdown Hills. Hidden in the dappled fringes of woodland, where beech and hawthorn had unfurled their mantles of soft green. Here spring fever was at its highest pitch. Blackbirds bustled in the hedgerows. Blue tits darted from bud to bud. A cuckoo’s strident tones rang out across the pocket-sized fields, emerald fresh with new grass.
Down a bank on the edge of the woods was scattered a mound of freshly dug rich red soil. Above it, a gaping hole. The entrance to a badger’s sett. And in front, a path, muddy, cow-pat splattered, and pitted by countless hooves. Evidence of the close proximity that exists between cattle and badgers and the reasoning behind the proposed slaughter whereby licences will be given to farmers for kill zones of 58 square miles.
One such zone would be here.
I revisited that area one evening last May. The woods were now a misty blur of green The beeches a lacy canopy of green. I climbed into the crook of a beech bough which overhung the bank. It gave me a bird’s eye view of the sett, safe from noses scenting for danger. Would marksmen of the future chose a similar position I wondered.
The sun dipped below the tree line in a blaze of orange. A sylph-like form, a roebuck, slipped in to the field and began to graze in the gathering grey. A blackbird zoomed into the holly thicket below me, clackering with alarm. Three woodpigeons crashed in to roost. Then, having spotted me, whirled away in a frenzy of flapping wings.
I fixed my eyes on the sett’s darkening entrance. It suddenly filled with a blur of black and white. A badger stood there motionless, listening. Quietly he slipped out and sniffed the air, paw raised. A smaller, slimmer badger appeared behind him. A sow. His mate. They touched noses and purred. Then the sow rolled over and, with both front paws, gave her belly a hearty scratch, lips curled back in a blissful grin. Next year, bang. A bullet would be fired, splintering her skull, smothering her grin in blood. Her mate to bolt back down the sett. Maybe to flee via another exit. Never to return. And if infected with TB, he would be spreading it. So defeating the objective of the cull. A point now raised by the RSPCA who state that such a cull will contribute little or nothing to the long-term goal of eradicating TB in cattle.
It was June when those cubs bumped into me; that sow’s offspring. There were four in all. And during the long golden evenings, they played, fought and chased each other. Up and down the bank they romped. The gnarled grey tangle of beech roots were worn smooth where king-of-the-castle was played in a boisterous tumult of squeals and squeaks. While the grass at the edge of the field was flattened by their play. More evidence, their detractors would say, of how TB could be spread, the resilient organisms lying in the grass until eaten by a grazing cow. Such cubs must be culled.
By the end of the summer it will be difficult to distinguish those growing youngsters from their parents. Especially when other badgers come to visit as they often do. You could get up to eight additional badgers around one sett. I could picture those bristle-grey animals bustling to and fro below me. How would a marksman deal with such a group? Use a machine gun?
Come early autumn, I shall still be watching this set. And still be enthralled by the rich entertainment provided by these creatures. Creatures protected by law. And deservedly so. My final watch will see me up in that beech tree one crisp September evening as the sky turns an inky blue and the birds grow quiet in their roosts. I will look down at the sow, now free from her brood, shunting in large bundles of dried grass and leaves. Fresh bedding for the winter months.
As I watch her shuffle backwards down into the depths of her home, I’ll murmur, ‘Sleep peacefully.’ And shiver. For come next summer, I fear that sleep will be a very long one.
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