“Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.” ― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

It seems fitting to start an article about badgers with a quote from Wind in the Willows, for it was with this book published in 1908 that the badger’s connection with the landscape and the people of Britain changed.

With Mr. Badger, Kenneth Graham created a character that slowly won the hearts of us all and eventually the badger became one of our most enigmatic wild animals in the UK.

Yet for many, the only time they see a badger is sadly on the side of the road dead. Whenever I speak to work colleagues I am reminded of Alan Bennet when his friend hits a badger whilst driving and after returning to the scene of the crime Alan realised that – “What particularly upsets him is that I have never seen a live badger – all the badgers I have seen like this one is now, a dirty corpse by the roadside. We drive on in sadness and silence.” ― Alan Bennett, Keeping On Keeping On

I am one of the fortunate ones for can I see badgers every day. Or every evening to be pedantic. When I first moved into the place I live now, I chose it because I was not a social person. I wanted to be close to my place of work but away from people and what I found instead was badgers.

My garden was part of those ancient badger tracks that meant manicured lawns and tarmacked drives would not and could not stop the journey that was imprinted in the very psyche of this strange allusive anti-social animal.

The first night I heard the sound of a badger shuffling through my place, I thought I was being broken into. The banging into the man-made structures of my home sounded like a burglar on a mission to just break in, take what they wanted and leave.

But when I looked out into the dusky darkness what I saw enthralled and delighted me, first I saw the grey shape of what appeared to be a cat with a stunted tail, and then the creature turned and I saw the face of a humbug.

I could barely contain myself a badger! The creature that so many bemoan about seeing dead by the road side was here very much alive in my garden, and very much on a mission to break into my home. And he was about six foot away from me.

And so it was from then, that my fascination with badgers started. I have to confess my first tactic was peanut butter sandwiches. Why? What myth or legend or story said badgers like peanut butter sandwiches? But they certainly did love them and that first night that is what I fed them.

Or to be precise I fed one. I never named my badgers, I notice that on blogs people name their badgers, but I just had a sense from the start they are wild. My first burglar badger 20 years ago, my sister called Jack until the time the two first cubs came down and so Jack became Jill.

Jill was not a good mother, the cubs died before the daffodils had barely danced and waved across the craters of the moon that now represented my garden. But I made the mistake of naming one, a scar faced male badger who lived, loved and fought on my now desolate land.

I worked long hours in those days and often at night completely shattered I would slowly walk back to my home to find a garden of badgers. Like a bag of humbugs thrown out of a bag they snuffled across the craters that should have been a lawn. And I would have to walk past them to get to my door.

Most showed indifference, they would raise their stripped heads and sniff the air, and then just ignore me, except one, who would catch my scent, Scar Face. And as I attempted to reach the door he would suddenly rear his head and like a tank barge his way towards me. I would just make it to a place of safety and shut the door.

If you want to anthropomorphic an animal then I did that with Scar Face. He was like the angriest belligerent teenage son you could have. One morning I heard what sounded like a raging bull kicking his way out of the enclosure into the rodeo. Scarface had got into the recycle wheelie bin and I had to get him out.

A battle that I did not want, a battle he felt he needed to win, but both reduced to compromise by a green plastic bin. He roared out of that prison like the wild animal he was.

And then I found him by the road side discarded like the grubby grey rug that Alan Bennett described. I recognised him by the scars, the years of fights etched on his face like medals. My last and first badger that ever I named lying dead on the road.

For they are wild animals. How many writers have given these wonderful secretive creatures characters like humans? Kenneth Grahams Mr Badger was just the start.

The first book at school that I brought was Watership Down and in that book there was a portrayal of a badger that was not wise and kind. He was the wild creature that he was born to be.

“Full of savage cunning”. He was wild, he was not a creature you would have in your living room. He was not the Mr. Badger of Kenneth Graham, that when Mole and Rat knocked on his door he so warmly but also so gruffly welcomed into his home.

And of course that is the reason he became the hunted, the animal no one could understood, the animal that would be blamed for all the problems that man encountered in the country side.

And this echoes the lines of poets like John Clare – Badger –

“When midnight comes a host of dogs and men Go out and track the badger to his den, And put a sack within the hole, and lie Till the old grunting badger passes bye.”

Badger baiting has survived into the 21st century. The most brutal practice – it is rather like fox hunting when Oscar Wilde said “the unspeakable In pursuit of the uneatable”

There are two things that a badger is afraid of – a man and a dog. For badgers, the two are merely extensions of the other. And ultimately it is the dog that pits its strength and wits against the badger. The man merely provides the circumstances to make it possible and becomes the malignant observer to the barbarity.

Badger baiting was very much the domain of the working class, in contrast to fox hunting which was for the landed gentry. Badger baiting was the opportunity for the uneducated and poor to take control of their own free time and inflict cruelty on a creature that the rich had no interest in and so therefore would never obstruct their sport.

Even today “badger experts” say, it can be a housing estate thing. They tend to be very vocal about their activities unlike country people who do it quietly.

It was never was it about feeding the poor. Except oddly people do actually eat badger – badger ham. This was something that I only found out 20 years into watching and feeding badgers, there are people that actually eat them. Those who have eaten it say it tastes like pork but sweeter.

There is a recipe from Germany that details how to boil badger meat with pears. And a century ago in England a badger feast was not unheard of. I have never heard anyone say to me they actually like it enough to eat it twice though.

And yet today we have culls to kill badgers purely to eradicate Bovine TB. Despite there still no conclusive proof that culls help eradicate Bovine TB the licence to cull badgers went ahead again in 2021.

So we have reached the strangest juxtaposition, we love badgers, but we are culling badgers, we run over badgers but we feed badgers peanut butter sandwiches.

Looking out on a foggy winter’s morning into my garden, I can see the remnants of the previous night’s badger’s feast. They had discarded the spring green leaves and tossed aside various items of food. But had snuffled their way through the bread with the meat fat poured over it.

Also chicken carcasses they love. It is eaten with enthusiasm, a great deal of noise, grunting and a crunching of bones. And of course my peanut butter sandwiches.

Yet whenever I hear about people that feed badgers it appears their badgers will eat anything. Mine must be Surrey Badgers, fussy eaters.

My abiding memory of a badger as a child was when reading Watership Down, Violet says – “It has just killed. I saw blood on its lips”

And Dandelion replies,” Lucky for us it had, otherwise it might have been quicker!”

To be fair they don’t seem to be that fast in my garden these days. But I do remember Scar Face pummelling towards me, like a Sherman tank that late summer evening, so many years ago. And having the battle with him stuck in my weelly bin.

And I think, stay wild.

“I’m a beast. I am and a Badger what’s more. We don’t change. We hold on.” CH Lewis

Please don’t change Mr. Badger, for you are the Story Teller of the Animal Kingdom. And what stories they have to tell.