Strategy and A Badger’s Family Circle

Failure is always disappointing, but the Badger Trust losing its legal challenge of the Badger Cull to the government was particularly galling because, it appears to me now that culling without independent monitors will create killing of the lowest denominator.  As many as you can for as cheap as you can type package.

This week, I have put up my longest ever video film on YouTube, a full seven minutes. Normally my weekly short films are a minute to a minute and a half in length, (another seven minutes of boredom some people might think,) however, today I chose to put up a longer film simply to show my Badgers in a random state of work, rest and play.  With a longer duration time you can clearly see in the seven minutes what I have observed through my lifetime.  The Badger stands for community, he stands for family and above all, he stands for integrity.  For in the case of the Badger, what you see is what you get.  A caring companion, a great parent and a stalwart defender. 

A lot of Badgers, I’m very sad to say, will now die after this high court ruling, but we must all do what we can to help and support one of the most important icons to this island’s countryside.

The Badger is the toughest, strongest and the most able animal within these shores to withstand this oncoming onslaught, but even this great hard character of the woodlands can only realistically take so much.  Persecution to the Badger has come in many forms and taken on many guises.  But now, his fight is with the establishment.  A body that has not listened to science and has not reasoned with positive debate. 

Way back in the seventies a Badger sett I looked over as a child was destroyed in the most savage, barbaric and brutal fashion.  Badger baiters I despise with a passion.  There was one survivor, a little runt of a Badger.  He had been severely mauled and yet, he managed to pull through and when he was strong enough he was taken from that place of carnage and placed in another Badger sett where the inhabitants welcomed and looked after him. There he flourished and his descendants still thrive to this very day.   

But as I watch his descendants play and frolic throughout the woodland I think back to that August day all those years ago and the scene I encountered as I entered that particular parcel of woodland.  Badgers strewn around, ripped to pieces.  Three dead baiting dogs just been dumped underneath the bushes, but the overriding memory by far was the old male Badger who I had nicknamed all those years ago as Daddy Cool.  His injuries were probably the most catastrophic.  His head, shoulders and hind quarters had been ripped so savagely that he was totally unrecognizable to the old Badger who I once knew and loved.    His stance and his injuries and his positioning to the sett was that of one who had defended and fought to the bitter end. 

A creation of nature so at one within the woodland they occupy, it seems to me their mere existence should be applauded and marvelled, but instead we look to destroy and do our level best to rearrange an eco-system that works scientifically beautifully.

The sun is shining here in The Cotswolds.  My son Sam along with two of his friends and his mother Jackie have just done their ice bucket challenges.  As their exuberant screams of ecstasy and sudden shock ring out across The Cotswold hills I cannot help but think, surely the Government would have much better things to occupy its so called academic minds?  President Obama dropped the bombshell that the United States has got no specific strategy to deal with Isis and other Islamic fundamentalist groups which run through Syria, Iraq and the whole of the Middle East.  You are seeing Russian tanks roll into a sovereign Ukraine and the memorabilia of the start of the 1914 1918 war is ever constant in our media.  With all this global turmoil going on, the world being at its most fragile state since 1945, the United Kingdom being put on Severe Alert for terrorism, you would honestly think that this coalition government of ours would have more pressing business affairs at home and abroad rather than wage war once again on our old ‘mind my own business’ icon, the British Badger.

This government’s best laid strategy on combatting Bovine TB lay in the restriction of cattle movements and a countrywide oral vaccination programme for the Badger.  The latter will involve, tenacity, ingenuity and a mind-set akin to the Badger.  A hands-on, a must-do and no job too big approach.

Please watch my short but longer than normal video of my Badgers. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cauzsq-MkHw&feature=youtube_gdata

A Badger's Community

A Badger’s Royal Icing

The end of this August has been as cold as any that I can remember.  Last week I saw the remnants of a light frost down in the valley, alongside the river.  It was hard to believe that it was only the 21^st August. 

The Coopers will soon be vacating the woodland.  Their summer time stake out surveillance of my Badger sett is starting to get too uncomfortable and hardly safe for people of their age, much to their annoyance.  The cold nights have come around much earlier.  The Badgers on the other hand seem to be really enjoying the cooler nights.  Such a marked contrast from the hot, sticky, sultry summer nights of just three weeks ago. 

There is something always so very fascinating about the changing of the seasons.  As many times as I have experienced each season slipping out of one and effortlessly easing into another, I have never ever seen the same season twice.  Always a differential.  Always a different starting date to the season that’s about to begin and the season that has just ended.  Nature’s way of always keeping us guessing, always unpredictable, which brings me nicely around to the behaviour of my Badgers.

A week or so ago, Daddy Cool moved his family from the Northern boundary on the outskirts of the woodland back deep inside to his stomping grounds much favoured for the middle of winter.  His actions however, had left me quite bemused.  Surely his weather predictions couldn’t be more accurate than Liam Dutton’s of Channel 4 News?  The weather, although cold for the end of August, but still nowhere near cold enough for him to be thinking of battening down the hatches deep inside the woodland ready for the onslaught of winter. 

The woodland is still in full canopy, the leaves not yet starting to turn and yet the Badgers’ behaviour strikes me as being quite odd. 

On Thursday night as I drove up to my house from work I saw a Land Rover parked outside my house which I instantly recognized as Nimrod’s, a Keeper friend of mine for many years.  I parked up just behind it and went inside the house through the back door into the kitchen where I found Jackie, my wife and Nimrod deep in conversation.  On entering the kitchen, Nimrod wasted no time in explaining to me the reason for him calling round.  There were rustlers and poachers in this vicinity of The Cotswolds.  He then went on to tell me about six fat lambs that he had had stolen from the Foxton Estate and two bullocks that had been miraculously exempt from the whole ordeal due mainly to the amount of bellowing they had created while the thieves were trying to load them.  Jackie piped up with “They’ve informed the police and everyone has been told to remain vigilante.” Immediately my thoughts were elsewhere and Daddy Cool’s odd behaviour now started to make sense.  “That’s why Daddy Cool has moved his family back deep inside the woodland, he had sensed that the poachers were getting too close,” I thought to myself.

“Why are you so silent?” asked Nimrod, “Just sat there looking into space, are you interested or not?”

“Oh I am very interested and I think I know where they will turn up next.  The herd of Roe deer between here and Beech Wyn have been targeted.”

“What makes you so sure?” asked Nimrod.

“The recent behaviour of one so close tells me, I just know the Roe deer will be the poachers’ next prize.  What are you doing tonight Nimrod?”

“Oh no Allan, no Allan, these nightly excursions with you always end the same, I am always explaining to the police and Lord Foxton and trying to justify the carnage you leave in your wake in the best possible interest of all concerned.”

I asked him again, “are you coming or not?”

“Ok, I will. About what time?

“7pm,” I replied. Nimrod reluctantly nodded and off he went.  

“Jackie, I want you to ring Mr and Mrs Cooper and invite them over here for the evening, I cannot have them up in the woods tonight.”

“Oh thanks Allan, what’s the reason I am asking them over?”

“I don’t know Jackie, you’ll think of something, you always do,” and giving her a quick kiss on the cheek I went out up to the garden shed where I found a couple of half empty tins of white gloss paint.  “This will do nicely,” I thought. 

Nimrod turned up at 7pm on the dot. “Which vehicle are we travelling in?” asked Nimrod.

“Shanks pony,” I replied.  “You carry this,” and I handed him one of the tins of gloss, “and I’ll carry this one.”

“What the hell is this for?” asked Nimrod knowing that there were going to be more explanations afoot from this evening’s escapades.

“All will be revealed if and when we see anything.”  Nimrod sighed.

As we walked along the sides of the hedges, through the fields of freshly combined cereal, the swathes of straw in gun barrel straight lines left from the combines, we both reminisced of summer nights passed when we played with all the other village kids on the flat 8 bales that had been left by the sledges on the back of the balers.  The dens we would all build and the Mr Wolf games we would all play. Magical days seemingly gone forever now with the ghost-like Cotswold villages mainly occupied by weekend second home city dwellers.  Capitalism had reached the villages many years previous with local people unable to buy the homes of their birth place and ever increasingly larger farm machinery making more and more farm labourers redundant. 

When we arrived nearer to Beech Wyn, the course of action was explained.  Nimrod was to go up to the Northern side of the woodland and I was to be down on the Southern side of the woodland.  There the vantage points were thus so that a wide angle of countryside could be surveyed.  Off Nimrod went and off I went.  I soon found a good hiding place in the bottom of a couple of Hawthorn trees.  Listening to the birds who soon gave way to the night time excursions of the bats.  The sun seems to go down much faster once the middle of August has been past.  The hours passed slowly and soon we were well into the night.  The time now was about 12:45 when my phone rang.  It was Nimrod.  “I can see lights,” he said quietly.  I told Nimrod I was on my way.  I left my position and sneaked up the side of the woodland towards Nimrod.  After about fifteen minutes I could hear, “psst psst.”  I looked over in the direction it came from and there was Nimrod standing in the throne of Daddy Cool’s, an old Ash stom.  I got up in there with him.  I too could now see the lights.  “That’s heavy duty torches,” I whispered to Nimrod. 

“I know,” he replied

“But where’s their vehicle?” I asked. 

“They stopped it down by the river.  Shall we start shouting now?” 

“No,” I replied, “We’ve got to get to their vehicle.”  The torches were getting nearer. 

“We’ve got to watch this,” said Nimrod rather nervously, “We don’t want to get ourselves shot.  With those torches you can guarantee they’ve either got rifles or crossbows.”

“I know.” I agreed.  The torches were now getting ever nearer and even from a vast distance some of the trunks of the big Beech trees were being lit up.

“We’re not going to be able to do this,” said Nimrod.  I could see that he was starting to get anxious and concerned. 

“Get hold of your paint pot and follow me.”   Out of Daddy Cool’s throne we climbed.  Nimrod followed me closely down through the woodland.  Over fallen trees deeper inside the woodland we went, our progression, although the wood was thick was speedy and soon we were climbing over the fence at the bottom side of the wood into the river meadows.  We ran across the river meadow to the river and then up alongside the river to where Nimrod thought their vehicle was parked.  We were both now completely out of breath and I knew that they must have reached the Northern boundary of Beech Wyn by now.  We then heard a couple of shots from a .22 rifle followed by two or three more. 

“Where’s this blasted vehicle?” I snapped round at Nimrod knowing full well that time was of the essence. If we didn’t do what we had to do soon, more animals would be shot.

“I saw them extinguish their lights around here, or so I thought.”

“Well it will be either a truck or a van, how difficult to see can it be? Look Nimrod, for goodness sake look.”  Nimrod was bent double out of breath.  Just then, seven Roe deer came running out of the wood. They ran through the river meadow at quite a lick and as we turned to watch the running deer we saw the dark shape tucked right tight in by the hedge.  The deer ran straight past, they had no intention of stopping. 

“There it is,” I pointed to the dark shape in the gloom.  We ran up to the vehicle and without hesitation, I prized open the lids of the paint with my penknife.  I started to pour the paint all over the vehicle. Nimrod just stood there. “Quick Nimrod, we haven’t got much time.” Nimrod groaned, and reluctantly picked up his pot and started pouring also. The paint was running all down the sides, all over the bonnet and all over the windscreen.  The vehicle was a black double cab pickup but now resembled a large cake with runny royal icing. I then espied an iron bar in the back.

“Right Nimrod, start shouting and hollering as loud as you can.”  I reached in and picked up the iron bar and started to bang as loud as I could on the side of the vehicle.  In the dead of night, this was a hell of a row.  Then we saw the three torches coming back across the fields from the Northern boundary.  As we watched the torch lights bobbing up and down we knew that the perpetrators were running hell for leather back to their vehicle. 

“Let’s go,” shouted Nimrod.

“Ring the police and tell them that you have stopped some poachers and their vehicle is covered in white gloss paint.  From here they will be going up through Stow on the Wold.”

“What are you doing?” asked Nimrod.

“I will see you at the weekend, thanks Nimrod.”

As I jogged back down the river, I had one more thing to do before I headed home. “I must check on my Badgers.” I thought.

Please watch my short film of my Badgers playing on a log deep inside the woodland.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVvpwH9gf4w&feature=youtube_gdata

Roses, Badgers and Life’s Expectations.

Another week in which the combines have continued on their phonetic devouring of the Cotswold’s cereals.  The fields of gold now much diminished from their harvest colour resembling now an autumn look of a sombre brown left from the plough and discs.

My wife has had her last week of her summer holiday in which she was blessed with a visit from her sister and niece, a happy reminiscence was had by all. The next day Jackie was surprised with a delivery of a beautiful bouquet of white roses gifted from her sister and niece. A most thoughtful and generous act.  Like so many things in life, the totally unexpected can create the most joy. 

My daughter has brought a doctor friend down from London for the weekend, and as we sat around the dining table having supper last night listening to the light hearted conversations, my son Sam talking of his imminent admission into the Royal Agriculture University Cirencester, Sophie referring back to some of her experiences at her Medical School, Kings College London and her young doctor friend who has just graduated telling us of his experiences of his first week as an F1 doctor at his hospital, I couldn’t help but wonder just how their young experiences differed so very much from my own.  A life full of opportunity and expectation where efforts of work and study are rewarded with lives of fulfilment, usefulness and satisfaction.  All these things come with the hope of a better tomorrow and when you see so much of the world with daggers drawn it has got to be so much more difficult even impossible for the young of these regions, Gaza, Iraq, Libya, Syria and even the Ukraine to seriously contemplate any meaningful future.

A telephone call last week from a couple of my game keeping friends informing me that once again poachers are out and about in this part of The Cotswolds.  Now with a lot of the harvest in there is an openness across The Cotswolds that creates very little cover for the Roe Deer, Fallow Deer, Muntjac, Hares and of course my dear Badgers.  Last week I watched old Daddy Cool gathering straw for Mrs Badger to bed down the sett on a rainy night from a recently harvested field above his woodland.  Along with him in the same field I saw seven Roe Deer and a couple of Muntjacs.  They all looked so exposed out there in the open.  For the people who wished them harm, it really would not be that difficult, so I was thrilled to see last Monday, Daddy Cool bring his whole family back from the now vulnerable Northern boundary to deep inside the woodland, Daddy Cool’s stronghold normally reserved for the winter months. 

Please watch my short film of Daddy Cool’s return to his stronghold deep inside the woodland.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkI172cP9ig&feature=youtube_gdata

A Badger’s Iron Curtain

This last few days has seen the harvest almost grind to a halt.  Rain has lashed parts of The Cotswolds and the phonetic activity of a week ago of combines being chased by corn trailers in turn being chased by bailers in turn being chased by discs and ploughs has now left just the discs charging over The Cotswold brash, turning the soil leaving it more acceptable to the autumn’s drilling.  The countryside now, much of the flamboyant colour of the spring, summer months has now been replaced to somewhat an autumn scene.

One evening, mid-week I was startled with some urgent knocking on the front door and it was some friends that thought we might be able to help with a severely injured Kestrel.  On closer examination of the bird, its injuries had left it almost lifeless.  The following day the Kestrel quietly passed away.  Always exceptionally sad to see a bird of such beauty come to such an undignified end.

However, the good news of the week was, my daughter Sophie tore herself away from London and had a nice quiet week here in The Cotswolds, where she shopped in Cheltenham town with her mother, and baked various goodies with an enthusiasm akin to Mary Berry.

Other news this week I found quite amazing how in the aftermath of the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner MH317 in amongst international indignation, the Russians decided to retaliate with the banning of all EU, American and Australian dairy products.  This tit for tat behaviour almost cheapens the lives of all those souls that were lost on that particular aircraft.  An act of such a monstrous nature and brutality has been counter balanced by the injustice of the impoverishment of the Russian people and to the detriment of worldwide agriculture also resulting once again in the fall of the Iron Curtain coming down between Russia and the rest of Europe.  Very sad days ahead I fear.

All the hoo ha and hullabaloo of BTB and the Badger cull of last year 2013, almost pales into insignificance by such a potential devastating act to bring world trade into the arena of annexation is simply politics of a school boy yard mentality.  Little wonder that the world seems more chaotic now than it has done in the last forty years.

To see the devastation and destruction of the biggest open air prison in the world, Gaza, it is starting to resemble the ghettos of Warsaw under Nazi occupation.  The ghettos that the world turned their backs on, including our own Winston Churchill, although, in his case you could argue that he already had enough on his plate.  Disproportionate bombing beyond belief, and the behaviour is in response to the three thousand seven hundred missiles plus that have been launched into Israel from the Palestinian side.  When you see the pathetic retaliation by Hamas to end the blockade that has been going on for years, to try and stop the ever encroaching settlements you cannot help but think, when this is all done and dusted, Hamas could start up a thriving export business an outdoor firework regalia, because the rockets you see being fired from them I’m sure that we have all seen something similar on any outdoor firework extravaganza, especially our own Guy Fawkes on November 5^th. 

The ever increasing march of Isis causing mayhem throughout Iraq.  The mayhem in Libya, even Egypt, the brokers between the Israelis and the Palestinians.  Them themselves, swept into power on a Coup displacing the legitimate elected Muslim brotherhood.  The whole thing doesn’t actually fill one with any confidence on any meaningful lasting peace in the region.

President Obama has at last decided to take the bull by the horns and try and stop this march of the fanatics albeit six months too late.  But any move to try and save and stop the genocide of one of the oldest peoples, The Yazidiz, in the region has got to be welcomed and applauded. 

It seems to me the whole business of these regime changes, i.e. Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Colonel Gadhafi of Libya, Mubarak of Egypt and Assad of Syria has caused more devastation, more loss of life and has totally succeeded in destabilising and creating vacuums for power which otherwise would not have existed.

The tough leaders of the Middle East who seemed to keep some kind of order and quality of life for the masses has now gone and there has barely been a day of normality since. 

On a lighter note, my Badger sett is doing extremely well.  The cubs now are almost the size of their parents.  The iron curtain that came down around them with the deployment of Mozart’s Magic Flute has served them well.  Long may it continue.

Please watch my short film of Mrs Badger bedding down her sett in the pouring rain with the straw Daddy Cool has hauled in from the harvested field.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcgWyrJrC1w&feature=youtube_gdata

Mother Badger starting to bed down her sett with freshly hauled barley straw,

Commonwealth Games, A Reminder To Humanity

The harvest is in full swing right across the whole of The Cotswolds.  I watch from a distance within the woodland the Badgers, as they in turn watch the combines rip through the fields of gold.  The cereal fields that have given cover to nature’s bounty of new life are now laid bare once again after the passing of these gigantic, noisy machines. 

Always fascinating to me how nature’s timing of the harvest coincides quite beautifully with the growth and strength of all those beings that took protection by it.  The Leverettes are now as big as their parents and can run as fast as the quickest of their relatives.  The Roe Deer fawns and the Fallow Deer fawns, the Muntjacs are now big enough and strong enough to easily outrun their predators, but always so pleasing to see them take cover in the woodlands as the combines relentlessly churn through the cereal fields acre upon acre.

The excitement of seeing these monstrous machines excites me as much now as when I was a child.  The busyness, the toing and froing of the tractors pulling the trailers full of grain.  The augers as they swing out from the side of the combines in a robotic, precise manner.  Not seeming to spill a grain as they load the moving trailers. 

The tolerances of todays’ technology never ceases to amaze and the whole theatrical experience when observed almost resembles Thunderbirds on speed. 

The Badgers are still doing exceptionally well.  The Coopers still delight in their part of the Badgers protection programme. 

Liz Truss, our Environmental Secretary, has announced that she doesn’t intend to roll out a gassing programme in any forthcoming Badger cull proposals, saying that she favours shooting.  A small step in the right direction I feel.  Although, any movement in the slaying of Badgers is a step backwards in our whole eco system.  Especially after hearing the news this week of a BTB outbreak in Cumbria that can be directly linked to cattle movements as my blog stated on Sunday June 9^th 2013 titled, “George Would Have Told Them to Keep Dodging the Lead.”

As the commemorations go on across the length and breadth of the land on the anniversary of the start of the 1914 1918 war, the Great War supposedly to end all wars, the excitement of the Commonwealth Games really brings home to me just how great the Great War was.  Nearly half the globe in conflict leaving a world in its wake consigning the mis-treatment of women and the underclass workforce in the annals of history.  Never before has the human race seen such vast change in such a minute window of time. 

A 50^th birthday party and 20 years wedding anniversary brought a very satisfying afternoon’s hospitality.  A chance to see people from the same village and to catch up on bits and pieces of gossip and to generally be enlightened by other people’s lives.  So diverse, so different to the conversations to be had in the villages forty years previous. 

Changes are constant, progress is forever in evolution, but I feel the real progress and change in evolution is always in the eye of the beholder, because so often the benefits to a minority are at extreme discord with the majority. 

The fundamental issues that were surely learnt from the 1914 1918 war and were shortly mirrored in the 1940 1945 war tells us that peace and harmony can only emulate from humanity and equality, two ingredients that are so conspicuous by their absence in the Middle East today. 

Please watch my amusing short film of my Badgers who epitomise equality and humanity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwSIKKR5ZXE