Part 1 (1/2)

The Badger.

by Alfred E. Pease.

”Hunting it is the n.o.blest exercise, Makes men laborious, active, wise; Brings health and doth the spirits delight; It helps the hearing and the sight: It teacheth arts that never slip The memory--good horsemans.h.i.+p, Search, sharpness, courage, and defence, And chaseth all ill-habits thence.”--BEN JONSON.

THE BADGER

PART I

I do not know of the existence of any monograph on the Badger, ancient or modern, in English or any other language. Nor have I been able to find any adequate description in any work on natural history or British fauna of this the largest, and by no means the least interesting, of the real wild animals that still exist in England and Wales. So that, however unfitted I may be to write a scientific treatise on the last of the bear tribe that we have yet with us, I have ventured to think that my own observations and researches, with experiences of the chase of this troglodyte, may be of interest to lovers of the animal world, and to not a few sportsmen.

From my boyhood all wild animals have had for me an intense fascination, and though in later years my hunting-grounds have been for the most part in other countries and continents, and among larger game, I doubt if any of the beasts whose acquaintance I have thus made has been a source of greater interest to me than the badger. The charm of an animal for man, where the sporting is the master instinct, appears to be measured by his capacity to elude observation and defy pursuit; and the badger, judged by this test, is a charming creature. I may be mistaken, but to me it appears that the chase in its widest sense is one of the best schools for studying nature. Such knowledge as I have gained of the badger has been due to the indulgence of this ”brutal” instinct, as it is profanely called, and from quiet observation. If the reader will spare a little time, I will show him the manner in which my observations are made, but I warn him that there is nothing scientific about them. I have no microscope and no dissecting-room.

It is June. A hot summer's day is dying, and the sun is sinking through soft clouds of glory behind the pine woods on the hill. A thousand birds in vale and woodland are singing with an ecstasy and sweetness that seem tenderly conscious that the hours of song are numbered--that the days are coming when darkness or dawn will steal over the land in silence, unheralded as it is to-day by their wild sweet notes. We wander across the pasture by the cattle, and along the side of the ripening meadow towards the wooded bank under the edge of the moor, where the badger has his home. As we near the covert, a few rabbits that have ventured far out into the field frisk up the hill, alarming their less adventurous companions, and all make for the shelter of the wood, displaying a hundred little cotton tails.

As the gate into the plantation opens a few wood-pigeons stop their cooing and fly swiftly up and out of the trees with a clean cutting slap-slap of their wings to some other solitude safer from intrusion.

Once in the shadow of the firs, softly treading we come up-wind to the badger ”set.” Here we choose a place among the larch stems which gives us a good view of the most-used entrances to the earth, some fifteen yards from the nearest hole. We turn up our coat-collars, draw our caps over our faces, and settle ourselves in such positions as will least try our patience and muscles during the hour in which we must remain immovable. In idea nothing could be more delightful than to sit in the deepening twilight of a summer's evening, with a soft breath of air stirring the feathery larch tops against the sky above, the ground carpeted with the vivid green of the opening bracken, surrounded by the music of cooing wood-pigeons, the full notes of blackbird and thrush, and listening to the pleasant sounds carried on the breeze from the distant farms.

Delightful as is the enjoyment of the confidences of Nature in her most hidden solitudes, the pleasure has its price, and the angler on a summer's eve can sympathize with the man who sits over a badger earth.

But he at least can protect himself to some extent against the exasperating attacks of midges in myriads, and vent his feelings aloud, and flog the waters, whilst the latter must stoically endure the torture and the plague. The most he can do is occasionally to draw his hand from his pocket, and slowly move it to his face and ma.s.sacre the settlers on his nose, his ears, his neck, and carefully move it again into its hiding-place. In spite of the torment, however, he may enjoy the sights and sounds, known to but few, that these witching hours alone can give.

The rabbits emerge within a yard of him, first the little ones, unconscious of his eye, then the old ones sit up and, imitating his immovability, watch him critically with their black beady eyes set, and noses palpitating; after a while old paterfamilias gives his signal of alarm or warning by a sharp pat, pat with his hind foot, telling all round that there is something in his vicinity he does not know how to account for. The cry of the startled blackbird warns that some other enemy is on foot as he flies from the bur-tree to the thorn, and we see an old fox moving through the young bracken with lowered head and brush, starting off on his nightly raid. A belated squirrel throws himself from the tree above, runs close by us on the ground, up the stem of a larch, and is soon lost in the sea of green above. A numerous and dissipated family of little crested wrens, which should have settled for the night ere this, twitter with diminutive voices as they twist in and out and hang on the boughs of the spruce in front of us.

Gradually, as the daylight fades, one after another of the singers becomes silent, the sounds of day are hushed, and a perfect silence reigns in the twilight amidst the trees. Without any warning we are conscious of the clean black-and-white face of an old badger over the earthwork outside his hole, and presently he is all in view, sitting with bowed fore-legs and his head turning on his lithe outstretched neck, scenting the night air. There is nothing to excite his suspicion, so he shambles to the nearest tree, puts up his fore-feet and rubs his neck, smells round the well-known trunk, and having satisfied himself that all is as usual, sits for awhile admiring the limited landscape before him. He then shuffles a few yards from the earth, scratches the soil here and there as if to keep his digging tools in order, and returns to the bottom of the tree. Another pied face appears, and more quickly than the first she trundles off to join her mate, and they bounce along one after another over the earths, round the trees, down one hole and out at another, and then rest awhile outside the earth they first emerged from. Three more come forth, and go through very much the same programme as the first, snorting and b.u.mping along one after the other and one against the other.

Presently one takes off into the thickest covert. You can hear him b.u.mping along, sweeping through the bracken and crackling the dead wood.

Presently the others come past you, tumbling along so close that you could hit them with your stick. Probably they take no notice, but if you wink, wince, or move they will shamble back to the earth and watch you for ten minutes. It is then a trial for your nerves. If you move you have seen the last of them for the night, but if you succeed in being perfectly still they will recover sufficient confidence to sally forth again, but will take off quickly in different directions for their night's ramble. Then at last we may raise our stiff limbs and turn our steps through the dark woods, leaving the fox and badger to their devices, and once more frightening the rabbits which flash past us as we wade homewards through the gra.s.s heavy and wet with dew. We have made no startling discovery on this our first night together by the badger ”set,” but probably we have made a better acquaintance with badgers in this hour than we could have gained in any museum of natural history, with the a.s.sistance of the most erudite Fellow of the Zoological Society.

To understand and appreciate all sides of the badger's character you must see him in war as well as at peace; and such knowledge has to be purchased by great labour and bodily fatigue. In the name of sport, as in the name of liberty, great crimes are often committed. There are those who look upon hunting of all sorts as cruel and degrading, and cannot understand the pleasures of a chase involving the distress of pursuit or pain to any animal. I have a certain sympathy for such sentiments, and yet, paradoxical as it may appear, my very love of animals increases my pa.s.sion for hunting them. Besides the longing to come to close quarters with them, the desire to possess or to handle them, there is the natural ambition to be even with them. There is an unwritten code of honour in the field which, if followed, makes the struggle of wits and strength, of skill and endurance, a fair one, and one in which alone many a valuable lesson out of Nature's book can be taught. To relieve any tender consciences amongst my readers I may here declare, without wis.h.i.+ng to reflect on brother sportsmen whose methods are more Cromwellian, that when victorious in the war with a badger, when, after many a hard-fought battle in his subterranean fortress--when mine and counter-mine, tunnel, shaft, and trench have driven him fighting to his last stand in his deepest and innermost citadel, and he has been forced to capitulate--I have never abandoned him to a victorious soldiery howling for blood, but have always given him honourable terms. I have never willingly or wantonly killed a badger; he has invariably become a pampered prisoner, or been transported to some new home, where some one whom I had interested in his species was prepared to give him protection, and a new start in life. Among those who have given my badgers protection I may name Mr.

Edward North Buxton, who has done so much to maintain the natural beauty of Epping Forest, and to protect wild life within its borders. I know of several thriving colonies of badgers within the forest precincts descended from my prisoners of war.

I have kept many badgers in confinement, but never to ”try” my dogs, and all my terriers learnt their trade in legitimate fas.h.i.+on. Badger-baiting I unreservedly condemn--it is as much a profanation of sport as coursing bagged hares in enclosed grounds. There are degrees of wickedness, and when a badger is placed in a properly-constructed badger-box there are few terriers that would not be vanquished in the encounter. The figure below ill.u.s.trates the correct box.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 1.]

One of the atrocious methods by which the badger was baited in the last century is described and denounced in volume xii. of the _Sporting Magazine_, 1788. ”They dig a place in the earth about a yard long, so that one end is four feet deep. At this end a strong stake is driven down. Then the badger's tail is split, a chain put through it, and fastened to the stake with such ability that the badger can come up to the other end of the place. The dogs are brought and set upon the poor animal, who sometimes destroys several dogs before it is killed.”

Badger-baiting, it seems, was the price the race had to pay for its existence, and with the happy disuse of a brutal sport the harmless badger has been doomed to extinction. The only method by which any British wild animal can be preserved from extinction in this age of what is termed progress, is to hunt it. Who can doubt, that if fox-hunting and otter-hunting were stopped to-day, both these creatures would be extinct within the next few years? It may be a hard bargain to make with them, but considering their own crimes of violence, and their incompatibility with ”civilization,” it does not seem to be a too severe condition to impose on the fox and the otter, that if they are permitted to live they must at least submit to the risks and fortunes of the chase. Not being able to do more than speculate on the intellectual and nervous capacity of animals, we are apt to a.s.sign to them some measure of human powers of thought and feeling. Undoubtedly they are physically less sensitive, and we probably err when we ascribe to them more than a slight ability to antic.i.p.ate, or credit them with such sentiments as anxiety, mental distress, and those thoughts and sensations that in the main make pain intolerable. Those species that have long been a.s.sociated with man have, I think, a greater capacity for suffering. The individuality of each domestic race has been developed; the difference of temperament and character of each individual becomes more marked, and more or less humanized, according to the influences by which it is surrounded. There is a more uniform character and greater similarity of temperament among wild animals, and the more refined the civilization and the more cultivated the senses, the more sensitive will the whole animal become. This may be seen in the most common of Nature's operations. The wild beast produces its young with ease and without pain. With woman, raised amidst the refinements of civilization, the same operation is with every precaution and a.s.sistance sometimes a dangerous, always an agonizing ordeal.

No, the terms are not hard. Take the case of a fox, the most hunted of animals. The ordinary lot of a fox compared with that of any other creature, wild or domestic, or even with man himself, is not an unenviable one. Unlike the domestic animals, he is not born into servitude or to die in early life by the butcher's knife or axe. Happier than man, he lives his life, whether longer or shorter, free from the worries, cares, and the thousand ills which flesh is heir to. The fox's life is free as air. Protected for the most part from the natural consequences of his marauding disposition, fair play is given to him to avoid the punishment he deserves by the exercise of that strategy, activity, and endurance with which he is so abundantly endowed. Two or three days in the three hundred and sixty-five he may have to exert himself more or less to save his brush, or the end may come swiftly and suddenly after a long run; but even so, are there not many of us who would be glad to know that our death would come as swiftly and painlessly to us as to the fox, who, flying for forty minutes before the pack, confident, perhaps, to the last that he is a match for his pursuers, is rolled over in his stride? The sportsman may pity the sinking fox, with every desire to see the victory of the straining pack, in the moment when, after gallantly standing up before hounds, a straight-necked veteran finds he has shot his last bolt, and turns with fire yet in his eye to meet death in its swiftest form.

There is something strange in the mixture of pain with pleasure. My little son comes out cub-hunting with me in the early morning of a September day. He is the picture of delight, sitting on his pony among the hounds, the effigy of enjoyment as he follows them with his and his pony's head just above the high bracken, the incarnation of satisfaction as he receives his first brush and is blooded. He is none the less a little sportsman for sobbing himself to sleep at night with his brush hugged under the bedclothes, because of the thought that the bright little cubs he saw killed will never again run in and out of the wood on the hillside as of yore. I look into his room the following day, and find him in his night-s.h.i.+rt busy extracting the tail-bone from his trophy, and he stops in his work only to ask when the hounds will be out again.

The power of enjoying hunting of any sort is no evidence of want of tenderer feelings. It may be that the days of sport are numbered by the exigencies of what is termed the progress of civilization; but whether men's hearts will be braver, their bodies and minds healthier, or their natures kindlier and happier for the change, only time may show. All this is something in the nature of apology; but, excuse or none, thousands are conscious that the nearest approach to pure unmixed pleasure that they have known has been derived from the chase, where cares are forgotten, pulses quickened, eyes brightened, and the mind refreshed. About conscious or unconscious vicarious sacrifice with regard to the badger I will not say more than this, that the baiting of an animal in confinement, even though he be but the scapegoat for a thousand of his kind, is so repugnant to humanity, and so likely to breed cruelty, that though I lament his imminent extinction I would say, ”perish _Meles taxus_” rather than let him pay this price for the continuance of his race, and, whatever view he might have himself, I would refuse him the option.

The badger has made a wonderful struggle for existence, and may linger on for many years yet in the more secluded corners of England and Wales (in Scotland he is almost extinct), but he owes all to his own mysterious silent ways, and nothing to man's mercy in the matter. The intelligent and unprejudiced wearers of velveteen, who, with the tacit consent of their masters, have by means of the steel trap, flag-trap, and gun, exterminated and banished for ever the most interesting of our animals and the most beautiful of our birds, have hitherto failed in their ruthless attempt to rid earth and heaven of everything but furred and feathered game, so far as the badger is concerned. In many English counties, however, the badger has given in before ceaseless digging, snaring, and shooting, and the silent covert where he had his earth, where he dug and delved and made his wonderful subterranean stronghold, knows him no more. He has gone with the polecat, the pine marten, the wild cat, the harriers, the buzzards, and a host of the brightest and loveliest of our birds. Guiltless of the crimes of his fellow-victims against game, he was and is still ignorantly cla.s.sed under that all-embracing word of the keeper, ”vermin.” There are few who lament his disappearance save perhaps the makers of shaving-brushes, and the old people whose faith in the efficacy of ”badger-grease” can no longer find the opportunity of exercising the same. This faith is an old one. I read in the _Sporting Magazine_, 1800, volume xvii.--”The flesh, blood, and grease of the badger are very useful for oils, ointments, salves, and powders, for shortness of breath, the cough of the lungs, for the stone, sprained sinews, coll-achs, etc. The skin, being well dressed, is very warm and comfortable for ancient people who are troubled with paralytic disorders.” Evidently a few badgers in the good old days supplied the place of the country doctor. About the fancied or really mischievous habits of the badger I shall have something to say later on.

PART II