Badger

There are signs the badgers are around us. There is (sadly) a body in a ditch a km away, but these prints were fresh and only 150m from us, along a path to the woods. The locals still think that they carry TB and infect the cattle. They will hunt them and dispose of any they find. I should note that there are very few cattle in our corner of France, and, certainly, none close by. Long-term studies in the UK over many years have proven that there is no link between TB in badgers and cattle. That doesn’t stop the locals who will not be convinced otherwise. Even though they are protected, they are eliminated. Ours is a farming community and, after all, there was no BSE, it was an English disease that missed France. Oddly enough, the cattle here got “Tractor Disease”. They fell under a tractor, got burned and buried in a hole. But it wasn’t BSE, honest!