A badger may come to a neighbourhood and stay for a long while
unnoticed. He prowls at night, unseen and unsuspected, and people may
suppose there is no badger within miles. In the same way otters are
at home in many a stream where nobody dreams there is an otter in the
neighbourhood. But let the badger's presence be discovered, and he will
be persecuted to the end. The wise badger shifts his tent at once if a
human nose is poked into it; all badgers would profit if they went to
the fox for a few wrinkles. The foxes have a maxim: Never be at home to
callers who may come again. A visiting-card, in the shape of a particle
of scent, is more than enough acquaintance for a fox with a human being.
Even the gamekeeper often harbours a badger unknowingly. What he does
not suspect he does not look for. And if he were to look for a month
for signs of a badger he might never find one. Again and again he might
pass within sight of a badger's holt, and think it to be the retreat of
a fox. But by chance he might come upon a clear imprint of a badger's
tracks, and after that it would not take him long to discover the
badger's lair. While not a friend of the badger, he has no such bitter
resentment against him as he feels for the fox. If it were not that
the badger every now and then commits an outrage that brings disgrace
on himself and all his kith and kin, the record of his life might be
written down as fairly harmless. In these days the badger can make
small claim as a provider of sport, which might mitigate the sentence
most keepers pass upon him.
We knew of a badger who lived in peace, his presence unsuspected, for
many long months. Then a series of mysterious poultry massacres began
to disturb the district, and sometimes a dozen chickens and ducklings
would be slain in one night. Some said fox, others dog; strange stories
of ghosts spread abroad; it was even hinted that a wolf had been
imported by mistake with foreign foxes. But one day tracks were seen
that were not the tracks of fox, dog, or wolf, and a trail of feathers
led to the discovery of a hidden draw-out. The badger was evicted and
summarily shot.
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