I saw two badgers having a fight, on the way home tonight.
They were sort of circling each other, and then snapping and rolling and tumbling off the pavement. The headlamps didn’t seem to dampen their spirits either.
They’re big aren’t they, badgers? I mean these two bruisers were the size of small dogs. In fact, I thought they were foxes at first! Then I saw their stripy heads and beady little faces.
What do badgers have to fight about? Who stole whose mashed potato?* Who are you calling ‘Discount Barcode’, you Pedestrian Crossing?… I watched them for a while.
In the end, one of them darted away from the other and shot across the road, through the headlamp beams, behind the parked cars.
The second of the badgers was in hot pursuit. I saw his sleek grey coat as he flew past. Then, the two of them bolted up the pavement, and suddenly they were gone.
It’s probably a territory thing. It usually is. Perhaps one of the badgers, let’s say the ‘townie’ badger, believes that the village sett belongs to him, in fact he dreams of a united town and village, just like the old days! So of course he thinks he can just stroll up and do whatever he likes with it. Meanwhile the village badger, and all the other sett badgers round here, are certain that they’re culturally separate from the town badgers, and quite like the village just as it is thank you.
Maybe down the road there’s even a group of ‘hamlet badgers’ not wanting to get involved in case the townie badger brings all his mates up for a massive badgergeddon.
Mushroom, mushroom.**
Anyway. With that the quiet road retuned to silence. Who knows what happened to the scrapping mustelidae! Nothing, I thought to myself, is ever really black and white is it?
* one for the Xennials.
** and one for the Millennials, just in case you were feeling left out.
No comments:
Post a Comment