Fast asleep, my dreamworld takes an unexpected swerve as raucous screaming erupts outside the open bedroom window. For a moment, I assume this is imagined, some emotional outburst from my subconscious. Then I realise that I’m awake. This is real. I check the time: 2am. The screaming continues. In fact, it’s now louder and somehow more intense. The back of the house is woodland, and noises off are common enough. A fox barking. Robin song that eases those anxious, wakeful stretches of the night. But this is something else altogether. This is violence.
My heart is racing now. I fear someone is being attacked, and from the pitch of the screaming, a woman. Mercifully, I soon discount this. My startled mind then suggests a catfight, but the sound I’m hearing is too big for that. So, despite the freezing cold beyond the duvet, I hop out of bed, pull back a curtain and stick my head outside.
Below me, about 20 feet away, what seem to be two large carpet bags are going at it. The streetlight is too dim to allow much colour into the scene, but the carpet bags seem grey. One of them disengages and moves rapidly away from the house; the other carpet bag pauses briefly and then follows. I see now, of course, that these are not carpet bags, but badgers. The badger running away stops and almost at once so does the other. Then, simultaneously, they turn and start running in the opposite direction, back towards the house. This happens a couple more times, back and forth. Then they start scrapping again.
By now, I’ve had enough. I’m too cold. “Do you mind?” I call down. The badgers freeze, lift their faces towards me, and then bolt for the woods.
Early February is a lively time for badgers. It is when cubs are born and females often mate soon after. Perhaps that’s why these males are in a stew, since it is mostly boars that fight, and older boars most of all. Plus, badger clans are matriarchies, and right now the females have better things to do.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024, is available now at guardianbookshop.com
