The Badger & I

An 18 year old T-shirt from Forbidden Planet of mine.

Badgers & the way that they seem to materialise just when you least expect it - I don't see too many badgers around on my bike rides. If I need a rabbit I just reach out and grab one (after a little chase) like an apple in an apple tree. If I want a Stag Deer I throw Monkey nut's (that's 'Monkey nut's' NOT 'Monkey's nut's') at it and there it is in the palm of My hand. If I want a midgey I just need open my mouth and on my tongue they land (like a great big pink wet bouncy castle. But badgers are pretty thin on the ground at the best of times! The ones I have seen that aren't sniffing out some tasty insects or crisps & cigarette butts etc (I don't know what they eat) and the odd one that I may hear rustling through the leaves in the woods (sniffing out a different kind of butt;) are either the flat kind (cars & lorrys are pretty heavy things) lying by the central reservation of the M25 or while out for a bike ride back in April I came across one in a chalk quarry (where the quarry there has doubled for the Planet Skaros (Dr Who) or the Planet X-Bar (Blakes 7) that pretty much looked asleep! Of course it was dead! Dead as a Dodo! And that my friends was the closest I have ever come to one...............except that is until yesterday evening when Lee & I were out for a bike ride around our local ride Number 1 (Richmond Park). The weather was great except for the strong headwind & the way it fired the rain at us like tiny wet bullets (it wasn't quite that bad) at a more or less horizontal direction straight into our faces! And the mild weather too made us build up quite a bit of heat considering we had set off out as though it were the frozen wastelands of the Arctic Tundra we were headed for!
Oh......did I mention the badger that ran out in front of me as I was travelling at a fair old pace in the pitch black with a very bright light focusing on just the part of the track that I most need to see? The F****r was pretty big too! It just jumped out in front of me! I almost shit my pants I can tell you! If I wasn't going so fast I would have smacked right into the poor sod's face with my front wheel.........& I would probably have come a right cropper and smashed my face on the gravel path......& Lee, being so close behind me would also have promptly said Hi to the pile of bike, bone & Badger that was me in the middle of the path!
It didn't end there though. You have to remember that all this happened in a matter of maybe 1 second! As I was nearly jumping out of my skin the poor thing ran into my back wheel and Lee said that it ran snout first into my back wheel and then it fell over kind of rolling back onto it's legs and legged it up the side of the hill and into the woods. I kept on going for a bit just in case it was coming after me! I eventually looked back after about 10 seconds and saw lee had stopped and was watching to see where the Badger had gone and if it was alright. I could see Lee had shone his light up the slope and all I could see was a thin wedge of light cutting through the dead ferns and bushes towards where the badger had sprinted too! They are such fast bastards when they want to be!
We lost it and well.....there was nothing more we could do except carry on. I do hope it is alright. So after nearly 9 or 10 miles completed and about 3 or 4 miles left to do, we stopped at the Richmond gate on our way out of the park and Lee went into his rucksack and pulled out two Cadbury's Flakes and a mini bar of Cadbury's milk chocolate each:) He always has some chocolate in his bag........I really don't know what I would do without him sometimes! Yum yum yum!!! I Love chocolate:)


Jason





(C) JPT 2006