James Chubb

The Pitter Patter of Tiny Feet

Some encounters are hard to forget, especially those which feature someone or something special. It probably won’t come as much of a surprise to those of you who have read one of these columns before, that my best loved, most cherished encounters normally involve wildlife... or food!

I remember clearly the first wild snake I ever found, a grass snake trapped in a water culvert; I must have been about 9 and I have maintained a close vigil over these latent pitfalls whenever I come across them ever since.

One such encounter sprang to mind this week as I received a couple of unconnected inquiries about this particular species, let me recount the story.

I was wandering home late one Friday night after an evening of socialising in my student pub of choice in Cheddar - the Galleries. It is still there in the Gorge, but in the context of this wildlife column I would only urge you to visit as there are water voles living in the river gardens opposite the pub. I digress; I had just bid farewell to Andrew Bedford and turned for home, walking up Venns Gate, into the stretch of road with almost no street lighting.

Scratch-scrape-skip. The sound of claws rasping on the asphalt carried easily over the still night air. What wind there was must have been blowing in my face as I had consumed one or two Guinness and the sensitive nose of the approaching badger had obviously not picked that up.

The badger ran into a pool of light cast by a single streetlamp and immediatlely skidded to a halt when it realised it was being watched by someone. It chased off back down the road, claws clattering on the surface, and bolted into a thick hedgerow. I had seen plenty of badgers at their sett, as I would often sit and wait on summer evenings to watch them emerge, but this was the first one I simply happened upon by accident.

All of which meandering, brings me to the topic of badgers. It’s a subject which requires a circumventive approach, as there is one aspect which tends to dominate in recent years. I am not going to touch upon the TB debacle as it is largely an economic debate: Should the agricultural policy be to totally destroy a herd that react to the TB test, when it is a disease we are able to treat with medication? As I said, this is a simple debate but ask an economist not a naturalist.

The sort of things I get asked about badgers are typified by this week's pair of stripey-faced queries. Firstly, and most commonly, holes in lawns. Lawn perforation can occur at the hands/paws/beaks of a variety of wild and not so wild protagonists. Rabbits will tend to dig narrow but deep holes in the summer to access the thirst-quenching roots of the grass. Jays and squirrels might leave small, messy holes in lawns from their hoarding habit with nuts and acorns. Badgers on the other hand will often dig at lawns to find earthworms; their favourite food and staple diet. These holes are normally about 10-15 centimetres across and about the same in depth. There really isn't much one can do about the problem other than fill back in the hole and hunt around for the sod of turf. Just check the bottom of the hole in case its a latrine, as replacing the divot can be a messy business if this is the case! Badgers will normally move on and target a neighbour's lawn in a few nights time.

The problem with badgers arises from their tenacity, which is why it is a far more simple solution to wait for them to tire of your turf and move on than attempt expensive and normally fruitless exclusion methods, which brings me to the second frequently asked question.

A colleague at the council found me at my desk at an unguarded and rare moment recently and described a scene which seemed to point towards badgers. He has a chicken run at the bottom of his garden and in the previous few nights it was being broken into by an unknown assailant.

The description was the handiwork of a badger I was sure: holes dug under and latterly through chikenwire, nothing molested on the other side, but a few chickens in the neighbour's garden much to the children's delight. Back-filling, infilling, no amount of perimeter reinforcement seemed to put the badger off. I suggested the only course of action was to wait it out. Keep repairing the fence, remove all possible food sources at night away from the munching brock and in a week or two he should have moved on.

I've heard no more on the subject, so I presume this is what has happened.