Behind You…
(Badgers at Temple Balsall, Warwickshire…)
The motionless, patient and silent interlude
Of tarrying, disturbed only by the rare intrusion
Of a magpie hustling for scraps, whilst screeching,
Plus one passing vehicle on the lane, was noticeable
For the absence of bobbing badgers’ heads from sett holes
And there was a feeling of suspense,
Of something awry and rather tense,
An aura of dysfunction, of activity subdued…
Suddenly, from a hole behind, two badgers with a bustling attitude
Hauled their lean bodies into view, causing some confusion
And forcing me to watch over my shoulder, reaching
For my camera to capture their foraging, keen and predictable.
Occasional halts and stares my way reversed the roles
And one took up a bear-like stance,
As if threatening, yet in a fearful, wary trance,
Before it returned to the grazing, its feasting renewed…
A movement of a foot, a snap of a twig and the badgers retreated
Quickly into the clawed out hole behind me, despite
Not reacting to a passing car or the repeated
Squawks of magpies, or the aircraft in flight…
Yet no other members of the copse’s clan were to emerge
Unusually and it was only when I left the scene and saw
That a badger lay dead beneath a fence upon a grassy verge
And was perhaps being avoided, its corpse infested and raw…
Pete Ray
24th June 2025…
There was certainly an odd tension in the copse.
The two badgers which fed on the morsels I had left were lean and eager but they surely knew I stood silently nearby.
It was rare that the other sett holes failed to produce any badgers when food was provided but the presence of the corpse was maybe a reason.
This was the third corpse seen in the copse during recent months: an adult, a cub and the one last night, probably a young adult…
Sad times…
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