Badgers

I think you are much to be congratulated on the success of the badger campaign. I am not happy, however - and I don't suppose you are - by the fact that badgers continue to be killed by farmers, who take the view that they are destructive of farmland. They are very shy animals, of course, and you seldom see them in the wild, unless you make a particular visit to a known sett.

I well remember the first time I saw a badger in the wild. It was one summer before the war. I was about seventeen years old, and I had spent this particular day in fishing the Kennet - my favourite river. There had been a heatwave and water had become very low in my particular part of the countryside. Looking ahead, as I fished up the river, I saw what seemed to me a tremendous rustling and crushing of reeds along the bank. There was evidently a fairly large animal in among the reeds, and I supposed that it must be a donkey. However, it was not. As I came still closer, a badger broke out of the reeds and lumbered away up the slope to the woodland. I suppose lack of water had driven it out into the bright sunshine of early afternoon. And I can't honestly claim to have seen many badgers since that day.

 
Image and text © Richard Adams, to whom requests for reproduction should be addressed.