venta

This evening, I left work and pedalled over to the other side of Reading to Sally's house. We had dinner, opened a bottle of wine, let a few more people in, and then turned most of the lights out. We left the upstairs lights on, to leave a little illumination in her newly-landscaped and rather lovely garden.

Sally chopped up an apple and dropped it on the path, and we all settled down, talking quietly.

At about half past nine, Pushkin suddenly stood up, staring intently out the window. Pushkin is a rather stocky jet-black cat and either his hearing or his sense of smell (likely both) is considerably better than ours. We all peered out into the halflight.

And yes, there! Where? There!

Fierce whispering and discreet pointing.

There? Oh yes, there!

A stripey face could just be seen, getting its snout firmly onto Sally's low-level bird table. Then a second joined it, and then a third lumbered over, munching on the pieces of apple.

In the summer, when soil begins to dry out, a newly "done" garden - all carefully watered, premium compost, nice and loosely packed - is a badger's idea of fun. Plus there's the contents of the bird table and the occasional bit of fruit. And a small pond to drink from, and plenty of worms. Sally's garden, for the North Reading sett, is the place to party of an evening.

For nearly an hour we watched the beasts come and go, tucking into birdseed and apple, and occasionally breaking for the gap in the fence when someone moved suddenly or got a little too close. I expected badgers to be very wary of humans, but these are sophisticated urban badgers and people fifteen feet or so away are barely worth noticing. When Pushkin - collar-bell a-ringing - jumped onto a nearby wall, it wasn't even worth lifting snout from trough for.

Badgers have surprisingly small heads for their bodies. It was difficult to see their grey bodies in the dark, so mostly we were watching the clearly-visible faces. It was only when one of them moved suddenly that the images of a lithe, otter-shaped creature were dispelled and their bulkiness became obvious.

And only one person said "oh no, big snake!" all evening.

Accordingly, Sally is Designated Hero of the Week (we haven't had one of those in ages) for furnishing me with dinner, and providing some very satisfactorily stripey badgers to watch. And, of course, for the 10-15 minutes she spends every morning filling in the holes they've dug and putting her plants back in.