A patchwork of golden crops, grassy hills and pine-scented woodlands surrounded us. The whole family was here, in our little corner of rural England where we meet up every year. And even better, just outside the cottages we stayed in was a badger sett.
This was in October 2018, but that sett is still the biggest I’ve ever found. The two furthest entrances/exits sat about a mile apart. One, on a small island in the middle of the lake just down the track from the cottages. The other sat on a huge grassy hill, looming just on the horizon, topped with a crown of pine trees.
But annoyingly, I’d never actually seen the clan that lived in it. At this point, I still hadn’t seen my first badger, bar the hundreds at the side of the road, heads ripped open.
I had tried though! I’d been scheming and coming up with ways to see them for over a year. I’d made mud traps, they got ruined by rats. Laid down peanuts, Muntjac got them. I staked out. Climbed trees. Set up remote cameras. Rubbed mud on myself to get rid of my scent; even wasted over seven hours sat in a field watching a hole. A few footprints, a blurry video of a tail, and one less bag of peanuts was all I achieved.
But I wasn’t giving up. As long as I wasn’t dead, I’d keep trying to see them. I decided tonight, was the night! “Going to look for the badgers! Ninth time lucky!” I called down to Dad, and walked out into the cool air, pulled my face mask up and jumped the old wire fence, onto the dirt track. I could see the sett already-those huge piles of orange soil sticking out through the brambles. But I’d camped out at this part of the sett before (three times!) and saw nothing (except a slug that fell out of a tree and landed on me) so I decided to go further away, towards the Hill, where the open fields and the woods met.
It was amazing how quickly it got dark. When I first went out, the sky was a stark hazy blue, a faint orange glow on the horizon. Vibrant songsters: Yellowhammers and Chaffinch filled the cool air with their singing, and I could still see the warm, amber Beeches stood guard around the cottages. But by the time I got to the field I wanted to be in, the blue was gone-now a ghostly, dusk grey; the eerie ink black Conifers stabbing the horizon.
The air was silent bar the odd echo or whisper on the wind, and the sudden shuffle of something moving in the darkness, that a little cold rush of adrenaline to scuttle down my back and along my arm. At first, I didn’t want to turn my torch on, worried I’d scare something, until right in front of me someone started screaming. I sprinted back a bit and shone the torch on them…
A pair of confused looking foxes bounded away from me through the empty field. They disappeared out of my torch beam, leaving me there, looking very stupid. But after that the torch stayed on, just in case.
I kept walking, now off the track, through to the field. Droplets of water danced in the air, illuminated by my torch. The only sound was my feet pressing down on the dead fragments of crop, and that high-pitched ringing you hear when everything’s silent.
Looming ahead of me were the trees. Gigantic black razors against the sky, the forest was just a huge, haunting silhouette now, but somewhere amongst its knotted roots were those gaping black holes, concealing the badgers. Now all I had to do was wait to see if anyone was home.
Torch in mouth, I unfolded my little stool and made myself comfortable. Every slight noise made me whip round with my torch; that little cold rush of adrenaline scuttled down my arm. Only to disappear when a dead leaf or stick appeared in my torch beam.
Looking up, the sky was now like a beautiful water-colour. Swirling blues, purples and scarlet glows of other distant galaxy’s whirled around each other, flecked with tiny blinking stars. Little rainbow ones, glowing white planets, and mini silver dots all arranged in fantastical shapes and patterns. You never get a view like this back home in Portsmouth, the skies are too polluted, hiding most of the stars.
Earth looked so dull compared to the night sky above it. All I could see down here was a dead blackness, only that static buzz and odd whisper in the air to keep me company.
Suddenly I realised there was a bright light in front of me. Tiny; caught in the beam of my torch, deep in the black forest. I squinted through my binoculars. A smaller light appeared just beside it. Were those eyes? They vanished silently into the inky shadows.
An instinctive rush of adrenaline. I glanced behind me to check there wasn’t anything there. Nothing. Then to my right, closer this time, I noticed another pair of lights, glowering just within the inky blackness of the giant pines. I squinted down my binoculars again. They blinked! They were eyes. They shuffled forwards towards the edge of the woodland, and another pair appeared close behind, bouncing to catch up with the first.
It was one of those wildlife-watching moments when you’re so absorbed and transfixed by what’s in front of you, you go completely rigid, focussing on nothing else around you. Nothing else in the World could possibly matter, apart from what’s happening right there at that moment.
And that is exactly how I felt, when out of the darkness, a badger ambled out of the woodland and into the light of my torch beam, turning to look at me.
P.S. Thankyou to Rhona Jayne Foster for the beautiful badger photo :)
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