The Badger: A Monograph

by Sir Alfred E. Pease

The badger and his wife have a regular spring cleaning after the winter is over, and about March and April a cart-load of winter bedding, rubbish, earth, and sweepings will be thrown in a few nights outside the front door. There is generally the old bedding left in one or two of the big chambers for the lady who is to be brought to bed in February, March, or April; and there is another turn-out after this interesting event has been accomplished. About the middle of June, in July and August, and as late as October and November, an extraordinary amount of fresh bedding will be taken in. On summer evenings I have watched the badgers at work, but regret that I cannot substantiate the following description:—"Badgers when they Earth, after by digging they have entered a good depth, for the clearing of the Earth out, one of them falleth on the back, and the other layeth Earth on the belly, and so taking his hinder feet in the mouth draweth the Belly-laden Badger out of the Hole or Cave; and having disburdened herself, re-enters and doth the like till all be finished."

No, this is not how it is done, though it is a curious sight to see the real thing. The badger will come out, take a look round, and sit awhile close to the mouth of the hole. He will then shuffle about and get further from the hole. You will watch him descend into some bracken-covered hollow, and will see nothing more of him for awhile. Then you will hear him gently pushing and shoving and grunting, and know that he is very busy over something. He will reappear bumping along backwards, a heap of bracken and of grass or old straw, left from a pheasant feed, under his belly, and encircled by his arms and fore-feet. He will continue this most undignified and curious mode of retrogression to the earth, and will disappear tail first down his hole, still hugging and tugging at his burden.

"It is very pleasant to behold them when they gather materials for their Couch, as straw, leaves, moss, and such-like; for with their Feet and their Head they will wrap as much together as a man will carry under his arm, and will make shift to get into their Cells and Couches" (The Gentleman's Recreation).

I have not seen a badger make more than two such excursions by daylight, but have no doubt that after dark a considerable number of such journeys may be accomplished. For weeks together, on any morning, you may see the litter of bracken and grass strewing the way to his home and down the various entrances.

And now let me again, with all possible respect, put some of our scientific friends right. It is not often that an amateur can; but a man who is not able to tell you everything, as these learned men do, about every living creature, may from a country life and experience be able to correct some errors in respect of one animal at least. M. Buffon, the immortal and wonderful natural historian, tells us that the badger is a solitary animal. This is the reverse of truth; he is less solitary than the fox. He is fond of company; he is monogamous, and clings closely and faithfully to his own wife. With badgers, as with the human race, the sexes are not precisely equal in numbers, and often, from the force of circumstances, a badger has to remain a celibate, but he is not a bachelor by choice. He may become a widower, but in either case he will travel far to seek a partner to share his shelter and his lot. It is not altogether rare to find an old solitary dog badger, who has loved and lost, or taken in late age to a hermit's cell; but he, as often as not, when he has failed to secure the companionship of the gentler sex, has found some other male to share his home, when they can live comfortably en garçon.

Nor do the married pair shun the society of their kind. I have often seen large badger "sets" almost as full of badgers as a warren is of rabbits. One evening, near my house, I waited an hour of midge-plagued time to watch the badgers come out from a small "set," and was rewarded by seeing a procession of seven full-grown badgers emerge from a single hole, and I had them all in full view for something like twenty minutes. As this was in July they could hardly be one family. They were every one more than a year old, and a badger's family is usually two in number, sometimes three, and never more than four; and this last is exceedingly rare in my experience. In no sense, therefore, is the badger solitary. Indeed I have actually known myself several instances of a badger and fox living in apparent amity in the same earth, whilst I hardly ever saw a badger "earth" that was not either itself or the immediate vicinity tenanted by rabbits. As to the consistency of any friendship that exists between badgers and foxes and rabbits, I shall have more to say later on. I have, however, taken a badger and rabbit out of the same hole lying side by side. The badger is said to be the protector of the rabbit. He does not altogether deserve this title, and the rabbit enjoys the immunity in a badger's earth chiefly from the fact that the badger cannot follow it in the smaller holes without digging, an effort which in his estimation is, as a rule, not worth the candle.

Buffon dwells on the cleanliness of the badger. He certainly is not the stinking animal he is accused of being. His house and himself are as a rule bright and cleanly looking, and it is only when in confinement, and deprived of the sanitary arrangements to which he is accustomed, that he becomes offensive. Writers are not correct in saying that he never deposits his dung in his earth, but as a rule he does not, and his habit is to go some little distance from his home, dig a hole, and there leave his excrement. He will use the same hole for a few days, and then cover it up with earth and make a new one. There is a smell about a badger "earth," but it is not disagreeable, and nothing like so rank and strong as that of a fox's. He is, however, often troubled with lice and ticks, so that it is desirable when your dogs have been to ground carefully to wash them. But in this respect a badger is not worse than sheep and goats, and with such a coat as he has it is no wonder that it is sometimes tenanted. The same distinguished authority states that the badger produces its young in summer, but I have never known this happen. March is the usual month, and the rule is not earlier than February nor later than April. A naturalist at Cambridge told me that he knew of a badger bitch that was many months in confinement (I think he said eighteen months), and gave birth to cubs—but I was not convinced of the accuracy of his statement that she had never had access to one of her kind. It is only fair to mention that Vyner, in his Notitia Venatica, states that "It is a fact perhaps not generally known, nevertheless curious, that badgers go twelve months with young. This fact I learned from a neighbour of mine in Warwickshire, who some years ago dug out in the spring a sow badger. She was confined in an outhouse for twelve months, at about which period she produced one young one. During her confinement it was impossible for her to have been visited by a male."

That an animal of this size should go with young for such a period is so extraordinary, and so great an exception to the ordinary provisions of nature, that the theory requires much greater support than mere hearsay evidence. If it were a fact, or if it were the rule, the evidence to support the theory of twelve months' gestation should be overwhelming, considering the number of badgers that are in confinement. I have had many in confinement for long periods, and have never known them to give any evidence in support of this theory. I have kept a pair for a long period, but, like many other wild animals in confinement, they never bred. All sorts of theories exist as to the period of gestation in badgers, but I think I shall be very near the mark when I say that they go with young about nine weeks, and I conceive that the mistake made by those who have thought that they go over a year is due to the fact, which I have noticed, that a pair of badgers do not breed every year. I cannot decide whether there is any precise rule, but am inclined to think that they breed once every two years. There are so many accounts of single badgers kept in confinement bringing forth young after a much longer period of gestation that it appears possible that the female has the power known to be possessed by the Roe-deer doe of postponing the operation of parturition for a considerable time.

The badger is not by nature a ferocious animal, though the female will repel with the greatest savagery any approach when she has young, but so will a hen with chickens. The temperament of the badger is a gentle, shrinking one. No animal prefers a more quiet life, loving a warm bed in a dry dark corner of earth or rocks. He loves to sleep and meditate in peace for the greater part of the twenty-four hours. He lies not far within his entrance hall during the spring and summer, and on a hot day he will sometimes come to the mouth of his hole. In the evening, in June or July, he will come outside, sit looking into the wood or shuffle round the bushes, stretch himself against the tree-stems, or have a clumsy romp with his wife and little ones; and when the daylight dies he will hurry off, rushing through the covert for his nightly ramble. In the summer months he will travel as far as six miles from home, but he is in bed again an hour before sunrise.

It is only at this time of the year that he can be hunted above ground. This can be done with a few beagles or harriers on a moonlight night, when, finding him in the open, they will give a merry chase and fine cry, and a run of several miles without a check. If his earths are stopped, and he finds no other refuge, he will be brought to bay. In some districts I have known sacks put into the mouths of the most used holes of a set, the open end of each sack having a running noose pegged into the ground, thus providing an astonishing reception on his return as he charges in, disturbed or pursued in his midnight ramble. By this means he is taken alive and unhurt, being bagged and secured in his attempt to enter. At other times of the year, when the days are short and the nights longer, he comes out later in the evening, waits for a moment at the mouth of his earth, takes a preliminary sniff round, and then rushes off at the top speed into the covert.