Badgers really are having their moment in the spotlight, aren’t they? Ever since the government decided that the bovine TB epidemic was so serious that something drastic had to be done, Mr Brock has been the recipient of a fantastic PR campaign by the animal-rights lobby. Badgers have been painted as sweet, fluffy, bumbling characters – though I’m not sure that most hedgehogs would recognise that description.
As Charles Moore writes in his Notes this week:
‘Badgers, because protected, have grown bolder, so I have had more chance to study them… They are more hairy than fluffy, and their colouring is dirtier than people think. They are ungainly, verminous, and very destructive.’
And as Charles goes on to say:
‘I don’t know where the fluffy, pretty stuff came in: I suppose when people first ceased to know them at first hand. Of course, one must not criticise badgers for their habits: they are, by nature, what they are.
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