Animal Day 4: Badgers & wicker men
It was Saturday afternoon & your humble correspondent was standing in the local trading post buying yeast, copper tubing, 12 bore cartridges & some badger bait. Now that the autumn is upon us, the fields are clear of crops & we can get back to doing something about bovine tuberculosis regardless of old Brock’s very efficient PR campaign. Down here in the Vale, we don’t see many ‘men from the Ministry’ – at least not since the last two disappeared on the very same day that the 30 foot Wicker Man in Jayfurt’s top field mysteriously caught fire
Now here’s something that might interest you & you certainly won’t learn from those Marc Jacobs sandal wearing twats in the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporations Natural History Unit – the whole lemming thing is a complete & utter misnomer. It’s not lemmings that commit mass suicide it is in fact badgers. Quite regularly, I drive to the station first thing in the morning & within 5 miles, pass half a dozen dead badgers at the side of the road. Coincidence? I don’t think so – it must be some sort of Brock suicide pact
Sadly, the time when farmers were allowed to control badger numbers have long since gone & these days, such behaviour is likely to result in Nuremburg-esque accusations & a six o’clock knock from the paramilitary wildlife police. In Brown’s Britain, it is alright for our feral yoof to hound families with disabled children to their deaths but try to protect the stock in your fields & before you can say it the bracelets were well & truly, & in the finest Maoist tradition you will be being denounced by the Badger Broadcasting Corporation ... which is why this morning dear readers, you will farmers the length of Albion stuffing apples with paracetamol. The more bungs that Nu Labour take from the fluffy bunny brigade (e.g. the £1m from the Political Animal Lobby before the 1997 election), the more suitably prepared apples will get rolled into setts - such actions have the advantage of causing frothing hysteria among the anthropomorphists & catastrophic liver failure in badgers
Comments
Interesting little tit-bit I overheard the other day while idly picking my nose in the beaters line.
Apparently an 'organisation' is picking up flattened road kill badgers along a stretch of the A303, in order to x-ray the carcases to see whether there were bullets or lead shot in them.
As a result several farmers fuel bills have gone down and the local Gunsmith is running low on Nosler Partition's.
Living next to a military training area as we do, I wondered why they didn't dump them on the tank tracks in front of a troop of Challengers! Still, each to his own.
Posted by: bambi-ski | September 29, 2009 10:08 AM
In Maryland, we have 'possums! It is common knowledge that all of these critters are born dead by the side of the road.
Posted by: Bomber Harris | September 29, 2009 5:46 PM
I'm in need of a replacement sporran, and badger is a great raw material for same.
Posted by: Angus Harris | September 29, 2009 9:01 PM
I've told this joke before, using different critters as appropriate to the locale, and I'm going to keep telling it until it's properly appreciated:
"Why did the chicken cross the road?"
"To show the badgers it could be done."
Posted by: Blackwing1 | September 30, 2009 9:15 PM