through a thicket, where, in obedience to their mother, the youngsters
came to a halt, while their sire, proceeding a few yards in advance,
sniffed the ground, like a beagle picking up the line of the hunt.
Having found the object of his search, he called his family to him, that
they might learn the meaning of the various signs around. But the doings
of the woodland folk could not yet be learnt by the little badgers, as
by the experienced parents, from trifling details, such as the altered
position of a leaf or twig, the ringing alarm-cry of a bird, the fresh
earth-smell near an upturned stone, or the taint of a moving creature
in the grass. Beside them lay a small brown and white stoat, its head
almost severed from its body by a quick, powerful bite, and, just
beyond, the motionless form of a half-grown rabbit, unmarked, save by a
small, clean-cut wound between the ears. The scent of both creatures was
noticeable everywhere around, and with it, quite as strong and fresh,
the scent of the big male badger. Walking up the path, soon after
nightfall, the badger had arrived on the scene of a woodland tragedy,
and had found the stoat so engrossed with its victim that to kill the
bloodthirsty little tyrant was the easy work of an instant. Afterwards,
mindful of the education of his progeny, he had hurried home to arrange
with his mate a timely object lesson in wood-craft.
The stoat was left untasted, but the rabbit was speedily devoured; and
then the badger family resorted to the riverside below the "set," where
the cubs were taught to lap the cool, clear water. Thence, before
returning home, they were taken to a clearing in the middle of the wood,
and, while the sire went off alone to scout and hunt, the mother badger
showed them how to find grubs and beetles under the rotting bark of the
tree-butts, in the crevices among the stones, and in the soft, damp
litter of the decaying leaves.
III.
FEAR OF THE TRAP.
Night after night, the cubs, sometimes under the protection of both
their parents, and sometimes under the protection of only the dam,
roamed through the by-ways of the countryside. From each expedition they
gleaned something of new and unexpected interest, till they grew wise in
the ways of Nature's folk that haunt the gloom--the strong, for ever
seeking opportunities of attack; the weak, for ever dreading even a
chance shadow on the moonlit trail.
A strange performance, which, for quite a month, seemed devoid of
meaning to the cubs, but which, nevertheless, Brock soon learned to
imitate, took place whenever the tainted flesh of a dead creature was
found in the way. The old badgers at once became alert, moved with the
utmost caution, smelt but did not touch the offensive morsel, and,
instead of seizing it, rolled over it again and yet again, as if the
scent proved irresistibly attractive. One of the cubs, that had always
shown an inclination to act differently from the way in which her
companions acted, and often became lazy and stupid when lesson-time
arrived, was destined to pay dearly for neglecting to imitate her
parents. Lagging behind the rest of the family, as in single file they
moved homeward after a long night's hunting in the fallow, she chanced
to scent some carrion in the ditch, turned aside to taste it, and
immediately was held fast in the teeth of an iron trap. Hearing her
cries of pain and terror, the mother hastened to the spot, and, for a
moment, was so bewildered with disappointment and anger that she
chastised the cub unmercifully, though the little creature was enduring
extreme agony. But directly the old badger recovered from her fit of
temper, she sought to make amends by petting and soothing the frightened
cub, and trying to remove the trap. Finally, after half an hour's
continuous effort, she accidentally found that the trap was connected
by a chain with a stake thrust into the ground. Quickly, with all the
strength of her muscular fore-paws, she dug up the soil at the end of
the chain, and then, with powerful teeth, wrenched the stake from its
position. Dragging the cruel trap, the young badger slowly followed her
dam homeward, but when she had gone about a hundred yards pain overcame
her, and she rolled down a slight incline near the hedge. For a few
minutes, she lay helpless; then, grunting hoarsely, she climbed the
ditch, and continued her way in the direction of a gap leading into the
wood. There, as she gained the top of the hedge, the trap was firmly
caught in the stout fork of a thorn-bush. Further progress was
impossible; all her frantic struggles failed to give her freedom. The
dam stayed near, vainly endeavouring to release her, till at dawn a
rustle was heard in the hedge, and a labourer on his way to the farm
came in sight above a hurdle in the gap. Reluctantly, the old badger
stole away into the wood, leaving the cub to her fate. It came--a single
blow on the nostrils from a stout cudgel--and all was over.
The lesson thus taught left a salutary impression on the minds of the
other cubs. From it they learned that the presence of stale flesh was
somehow associated with the peculiar scent of oiled and rusty iron, or
with the taint of a human hand, and was fraught with the utmost danger.
They somehow felt that their dam acted wisely in rolling over any
decaying refuse she happened to find on her way; and later, when Brock,
seizing an opportunity to imitate his mother, sprang another trap,
which, closing suddenly beneath his back, did no more harm than to rob
him of a bunch of fur, they recognised how a menace to their safety
might be easily and completely removed by the simple expedient taught
them by their careful parent.
Though she invariably took the utmost precaution against danger from
baited traps, the old she-badger was nevertheless surprised, almost as
much as were the cubs, at the incidents just described. At various times
she had sprung more than a dozen traps, but in each case her attention
had been directed to the trap only by the scent of iron, or of the human
hand. However faint that scent might be, and however mingled with the
smell of newly turned earth or of sap from bruised stalks of woodland
plants, she immediately detected it, rolled on the spot, and then noted
the signs around--the disturbed leaf-mould, and the foot-scent of man
leading back among the bilberry bushes, or down the winding paths
between the oaks, where, occasionally, she also found faint traces of
the hand-scent on bits of lichen, or on rotten twigs, fallen from the
grasp of her enemy as he clutched the tree-trunks in his steep descent
towards the riverside. But never before had she seen a baited trap. Her
dam had never seen one; her grand-dam had been equally ignorant; and yet
both, like herself, had always rolled on any tainted flesh they chanced
to come across on their many journeys.
For generations, in this far county of the west, the creatures of the
woods, except the fox, had never been systematically hunted. The
vicissitudes of history had directly affected the welfare of wild
animals. The old professional hunting and fighting classes had become
unambitious tenant farmers; and, partly through the operations of an old
Welsh law regarding the equal division of property, the land beyond the
feudal tracts of the Norman Marches were, in many instances, broken up
into small freeholds owned by descendants of the princely families of
bygone ages. But hard, incessant work was the lot of tenant and
freeholder alike. When the aims and the experiences of the old fighting
and sporting days had passed away, and nothing was left but ceaseless
toil, these essentially combative people, to whom violent and continuous
excitement was the very breath of life, became, for a while at least,
knavish and immoral, sunk almost to one dead social level, and totally
uninteresting because, in their new life of peaceful tillage--a life far
more suited to their English law-givers than to themselves--they were
apparently incapable of maintaining that complete, vigilant interest in
their ordinary surroundings which makes for enlightenment and success.
Having lost the love of "venerie" possessed by their forefathers, the
farmers cared little about any wild creatures but hares and rabbits; a
badger's ham was to them an unknown article of food. The fear of a
baited trap had, therefore, probably descended from one badger to
another since days when the green-gowned forester came to the farm, from
the lodge down-river, and sought assistance in the capture of an animal
for the sport of an otherwise dull Sunday afternoon in the courtyard of
the nearest castle; or even since ages far remote, when a badger's flesh
was esteemed a luxury by the earliest Celts.
Unbaited traps, in the "runs" of the rabbits, had at intervals been
common for centuries; but now the carefully prepared baits and the
unusually strong traps seemed to indicate nothing less than an organised
attack on other and more powerful night hunters. The badger's fears,
however, were hardly warranted. Five traps had been placed in the wood
by a curious visitor staying at the village inn. In one of these,
Brock's sister had been caught; but the owner of the trap knew nothing
beyond the fact that it had mysteriously disappeared from the spot where
he had seen it fixed. Another was sprung by Brock; two at the far end of
the wood were so completely fouled by a fox that every prowling creature
carefully avoided the spot; while in the fifth was found a single
blood-stained claw, left to prove the visit of a renegade cat.
It may well be imagined that a large and interesting animal like the
badger, keeping for many years to an underground abode so spacious that
the mound at its principal entrance is often a quite conspicuous
landmark for some distance in the woods, would be subject to frequent
and varied attacks from man, and thus be speedily exterminated. It may
also be imagined that the habits of following the same well worn paths
night after night, of never ranging further than a few miles from the
"set," and of living so sociably that the community sometimes numbers
from half-a-dozen to a dozen members, apart from such lodgers as foxes,
rabbits, and wood-mice, would all combine to render the creature an easy
prey.
But if the badger's ways are carefully studied, the very circumstances
which at first seem unfavourable to him are found to account for much of
his immunity from harm. The depth of his breeding chamber and the length
of the connecting passages are, as a rule, indicated by the size of the
mound before his door. The fact that he regularly pursues the same paths
in his nightly excursions enables him to become familiar, like the fox,
with each sight and scent and sound of the woods, so that anything
strange is at once noticed, and danger avoided. His sociability is a
distinct gain, because he receives therefrom co-operation in his sapping
and mining while he aims to secure the impregnability of his fortress;
and his tolerance of cunning and timid neighbours gains for him this
advantage: sometimes in the dusk, before venturing abroad, he receives a
warning that danger lurks in the thickets around his home--perhaps from
a double line of scent indicating that the fox has started on a journey
and then hurriedly turned back, or from numerous cross-scents at the
mouth of the burrow, where the rabbits and the wood-mice have passed to
and fro, deterred by fear in their frequent attempts to reach feeding
places beyond the nearest briar-clumps. His methods, however, when
either his neighbours or the members of his own family become too
numerous, are prompt and drastic.
Shy, inoffensive, and, for a young creature unacquainted with the
responsibilities of a family, deliberate to the point of drollery in all
his movements, Brock grew up beneath his parents' care; and, with an
intelligence keener than that possessed by the other members of the
little woodland family, learned many lessons which they failed to
understand. When his mother called, he was always the first to hasten to
her side. Each incident of the night, if of any significance, was
explained to her offspring by the mother. Often Brock was the only
listener when she began her story, and the late arrivals heard but
disconnected parts.
Beautiful beyond comparison were those brief summer nights, silent,
starlit, fragrant, when the badgers led their young by many a devious
path through close-arched bowers amid the tangled bracken, or under
drooping sprays of thorn and honeysuckle in the hidden ditches, or
through close tunnels, as gloomy as the passages of their underground
abode, in the dense thickets of the furze. Sometimes they wandered in
the corn and root-crop, or in the hayfield where the sorrel, a cooling
medicinal herb for many of the woodland folk, grew long and succulent;
and sometimes they descended the steep cattle-path on the far side of
the farm, where the big dor-beetles, as plentiful there as in the
grass-clumps of the open pasture, were easily struck down while they
circled, droning loudly, about the heaps of refuse near the hedge.
Once, late in July, when the badgers were busily catching beetles by the
side of the cattle-path, Brock, thrusting his snout into the grass to
secure a crawling insect, chanced to hear a faint, continuous sound, as
of a number of tiny creatures moving to and fro in a hollow beneath the
moss-covered mound at his feet. He listened intently, his head cocked
knowingly towards the spot whence the sound proceeded; then, scratching
up a few roots of the moss, he sniffed enquiringly, drawing in a long,
deep breath, at the mouth of a thimble-shaped hole his sharp claws had
exposed.
Unexpectedly, and without the help of the dam, he had discovered a
wild-bees' nest. His inborn love of honey was every whit as strong as a
bear's, and he recognised the scent as similar to that of insects known
by him to be far more tasty than beetles; so, without a moment's
hesitation, he began to dig away the soil. The nest was soon unearthed,
and the little badger, completely protected by his thick and wiry coat
from the half-hearted assaults of the bewildered bees, greedily devoured
the entire comb, together with every well-fed grub and every drop of
honey the fragile cells contained. His eagerness was such that these
spoils seemed hardly more than a tempting morsel sufficient to awaken a
desire for the luscious sweets of the wayside storehouses. He carefully
hunted the hedgerow, as far as a gate leading to a rick-yard, and at
last, close to a stile, found another nest, which, also, he quickly
destroyed.
Henceforth, till the end of August, there were few nights during which
he did not find a meal of honey and grubs. The summer was fine and warm,
a lavish profusion of flowers adorned the fields and the woods, and
humble-bees and wasps were everywhere numerous. As if to taunt the
badgers with inability to climb, a swarm of tree-wasps lived in a big
nest of wood-pulp suspended from a branch ten feet or so above the
"set," and, every afternoon, the badgers, as they waited near the mouth
of their dwelling for the darkness to deepen, heard the shrill, long
continued humming of the sentinel wasps around the big ball in the
tree--surely one of the most appetising sounds that could ever reach a
badger's ears. But the wasps that had built among the ferns near the
river-path, and in the hollows of the hedges, were remorselessly hunted
and despoiled. Their stings failed to penetrate the thick coat and hide
of their persistent foes, while a chance stab on the lips or between the
nostrils seemed only to arouse the badgers from leisurely methods of
pillage to quick and ruthless slaughter of the adult insects as well as
of the immature grubs. But Brock never committed the indiscretion of
swallowing a full-grown wasp. With his fore-paws he dexterously struck
and crippled the angry sentinels that buzzed about his ears, and, with
teeth bared in order to prevent a sting on his tender muzzle, disabled
the newly emerged and sluggish insects that wandered over the comb.
As autumn drew on, the cubs grew strong and fat on the plentiful
supplies of food, which, with their parents' help, they readily found in
field and wood. Brock gave promise of abnormal strength, and was already
considerably heavier than his sister. They fared far better than the
third cub, a little male, that, notwithstanding a temper almost as fiery
as Brock's, was worsted in every dispute and frequently robbed of his
food, and still, never owning himself beaten, persisted in drawing
attention to his success whenever he happened on something fresh and
toothsome. At such times, instead of hastily and silently regaling
himself, he made a great a-do, grunting with rage and defiance, like a
dog that guards a marrow-bone but will not settle down to gnaw its juicy
ends.
Brock's brother was so often deprived of his legitimate spoils, that,
while his surliness was increased, his bodily growth was checked. He was
small and thin for his age; and so, when a kind of fever peculiar to
young badgers broke out in the woodland home, he succumbed. His grave
was a shallow depression near the path below the "set," whither his
parents dragged his lifeless body, and where the whispering leaves of
autumn presently descended to array him in a red and golden robe of
death.
The other young badgers quickly recovered from their fever; and by the
end of October all the animals were, as sportsmen say, "in grease," and
well prepared for winter's cold and privation. The old badgers became
more and more indisposed to roam abroad; and, whereas in summer they
sometimes wandered four or five miles from the "set," they now seldom
went further than the gorse-thicket on the fringe of the wood.
IV.
THE WINTER "OVEN."
The badger-cubs, while not so well provided against the cold as were
their parents, grew lazy as winter advanced, and spent most of their
time indoors on a large heap of fresh bedding, that had been collected
under the oaks and carried to a special winter "oven" below the chamber
generally occupied in summer. Here, the sudden changes of temperature
affecting the outer world were hardly noticeable; and so enervating were
the warmth and indolence, that the badgers, in spite of thick furs and
tough hides, rarely left their retreat when the shrill voice of the
north-east wind, overhead in the mouth of the burrow, told them of frost
and snow.
About mid-winter, the first of two changes took place in the colour of
the young badgers' coats; from silver-grey it turned to dull brownish
yellow, and the contrasts in the pied markings of the cheeks became
increasingly pronounced. This change happened a little later with Brock
than with his sister. Eventually, late in the following winter, the
young female, arriving at maturity, donned a gown of darker grey, and
her face was striped with black and white; shortly afterwards, Brock,
too, assumed the livery of a full-grown badger.
Meanwhile, till events occurred of which the second change was only a
portent, all remained fairly peaceful in the big burrow under the whins
and brambles. Occasionally, in the brief winter days, Brock was awakened
from his comfortable sleep by the music of the hounds, as they passed by
on the scent of Vulp, the fleetest and most cunning fox on the
countryside, or by the stamp of impatient hoofs, as the huntsman's mare,
tethered to a tree not far from the "set," eagerly awaited her rider's
return from a "forward cast" into the dense thicket beyond the glade.
One afternoon in late winter, a young vixen, that, without knowing it,
had completely baffled her pursuers, crept, footsore and
travel-stained, into the mouth of the "set," and lay there, panting
loudly, till night descended, and she had sufficiently recovered from
her distress to continue her homeward journey. Now and again, the sharp
report of a shotgun echoed down the wood; and once, late at night, when
Brock climbed up from the "oven" to sit awhile on the mound before his
door, the scent of blood was strong in the passage leading to the
rabbit's quarters. Unfortunate bunny! Next night, stiff and sore from
her wounds, she crawled out into the wood, and Vulp and his vixen put an
end to her misery long before the badgers ventured from their lair.
Winter, with its long hours of sleep, passed quietly away. Amid the
sprouting grasses by the river-bank, the snowdrops opened to the breath
of spring; soon afterwards, the early violets and primroses decked the
hedgerows on the margin of the wood, and the wild hyacinths thrust their
spike-shaped leaves above the mould. The hedgehogs, curled in their beds
amid the wind-blown oak-leaves, were awakened by the gentle heat, and
wandered through the ditches in search of slugs and snails. One
evening, as the moon shone over the hill, the woodcock, that for months
had dwelt by day in the oak-scrub near the "set," and had fed at night
in the swampy thickets by the rill, heard the voice of a curlew
descending from the heights of the sky, and rose, on quick, glad
pinions, far beyond the soaring of the lark, to join a great bird-army
travelling north. Regularly, as the time for sleep drew nigh, the old
inhabitants among the woodland birds--the thrushes, the robins, the
finches, and the wrens--squabbled loudly as they settled to rest: their
favourite roosting places were being invaded by aliens of their species,
that, desirous of breaking for the night their northward journey,
dropped, twittering, into every bush and brake on the margin of the
copse. And into Nature's breast swept, like an irresistible flood, a
yearning for maternity.
The vixen, that once had rested inside the burrow to recover from her
"run" before the hounds, remembered the sanctuary, returned to it, and
there in time gave birth to her young; and, though almost in touch with
such enemies as the badger and the fox, a few of the rabbits that had
been reared during the previous season in the antechamber of the "set"
enlarged their dwelling place, and were soon engaged in tending a
numerous offspring. The timid wood-mice, following suit, scooped out a
dozen tiny galleries within an old back entrance of the burrow, and
multiplied exceedingly. But, while all other creatures seemed bent on
family affairs, Brock's parents, following a not infrequent habit of
their kindred, deferred such duties to another season.
As spring advanced, food became far more abundant than in winter, and
the badgers' appetites correspondingly increased. Directly the evening
shadows began to deepen, parents and cubs alike became impatient of the
long day's inactivity, and adjourned together to one or other of the
entrances, generally to the main opening behind the big mound. There,
unseen, they could watch the rooks sail slowly overhead, and the
pigeons, with a sharp hiss of swiftly beating wings, drop down into the
trees, and flutter, cooing loudly, from bough to bough before they fell
asleep. Then, after a twilight romp in and about the mouth of the
burrow, the badgers took up the business of the night, and wandered away
over the countryside in search of food, sometimes extending their
journeys even as far as the garden of a cottage five miles distant,
where Brock distinguished himself by overturning a hive and devouring
every particle of a new honeycomb found therein.
Autumn, beautiful with pearly mists and red and golden leaves, again
succeeded summer, and the woods resounded with the music of the
huntsman's horn, as the hounds "harked forward" on the scent of fleeing
fox-cubs, that had never heard, till then, the cries of the pursuing
pack.
One morning, Brock lay out in the undergrowth, though the sun was high
and the rest of his family slept safely in the burrow. At the time, his
temper was not particularly sweet, for, on returning to the "set" an
hour before dawn, he had quarrelled with his sire. Among the dead leaves
and hay strewn on the floor of the chamber usually inhabited by the
badgers in warm weather, was an old bone, discovered by Brock in the
woods, and carried home as a plaything. For this bone Brock had
conceived a violent affection, almost like that of a child for a
limbless and much disfigured doll. He would lie outstretched on his bed,
for an hour at a time, with his toy between his fore-feet, vainly
sucking the broken end for marrow, or sharpening his teeth by gnawing
the juiceless knob, with perfect contentment written on every line of
his long, solemn face. If disturbed, he would take the bone to the
winter "oven" below, and there, alone, would toss it from corner to
corner and pounce on it with glee, or, with a sudden change of manner,
would grasp it in his fore-paws, roll on his back, and scratch, and
bite, and kick it, till, tired of the fun, he dropped asleep beside his
plaything; while overhead, the rabbits and the voles, at a loss to
imagine what was happening in the dark hollows of the "earth," quaked
with fear, or bolted helter-skelter into the bushes beyond the mound.