This sett I’ve known for 50 years. I think it was first occupied in the early 1950s. Huge now, 200 metres long and 60 wide, with innumerable entrances concealed among dense rhododendron thickets, I called it Badgeropolis, and spent much time watching from the hillside above as the badgers made their moonlit excursions. These were an enchantment: the silvery bounce of their beautiful coats; the rough-and-tumble of cubs’ play; their curiosity and habituation to my still, nightly presence; the astonishing inflected vocabulary of squeal, purr, yelp and mew; their tenderness at mating; the affection between boar and sow, parents and cubs.
There was little threat to badgers in those days. Shepherds in the valley viewed them fondly as natural pest-controllers. The only horrible sight I witnessed was when one rogue farmer set his collies on a big old boar caught in a fox snare, and summoned his friends. The savage noise of his “sport” polluted the valley. By the time I reached its source, the badger was defenceless, a back leg stripped by wire to sinew and bone, the dogs still ripping at it.
I took a shotgun propped against a parked Land Rover, hurled the dogs aside, put the muzzle to the poor animal’s heart, replaced the gun, and spat at the spectators’ feet as I walked away. It was a death that filled the valley with throbbing silence. That night, my tyres were slashed.
Through the Thatcher years, the big sett became a focus for terriermen with spades and sacks. They dug out these old spirits of place, sold them to the calvaries of city dog-pits.
This afternoon, for the first time in years, I went back to see how Badgeropolis had survived. Setts can be remarkably resistant to persecution. I looked for signs that denote presence and activity: neat dungpits along field-margins; snuffle-holes among leaf-litter; tufts of hair where pathways pass beneath barbed wire; paw prints and scratch-marks. All were there, but so much less numerous and recent than I remember. A new darkness has arrived for these lovely, sentient creatures.
