Beyond The Woods

Over dyke, across burn and through the pines, following the foray of a curious young badger into the wider world is a profound experience

- Jim Crumley

AMID-MAY evening, uncomfortably perched on the trunk of a fallen willow - I was hoping for badger cubs.

I was sustained by walk-on appearances from roebuck, robin, roding woodcock - alternating otter squeak and frog croak, how do you get a voice like that? - and noises from a nearby cuckoo.

But, by 10 o'clock, not a badger in sight. It happens.

Then a new noise from the bank above the sett, a scuffle by a wire fence between woodland and field - a miniature badger face towed its squirming body under the bottom strand. Then there was a crumbling drystane dyke and, beyond, a steep bank above a tiny hill burn.

The cub made it to the decrepit crown of the dilapidated dyke, then lost it when all four feet were briefly on the same stone.

The stone moved, bounced down on to the bank. The cub rolled after it, out of control, and into the burn where it stood and shook itself, returned to the bank, headed downstream as if nothing at all had happened.

With badger cubs, the curiosity of the mustelid is there from the start, likewise the courage, likewise the robust response to life and its obstacles.

It showed no desire to return to the sett, so where? In wellies and overtrousers I took to the burn and walked a few yards behind, reasonably confident that  the sound of the burn was in my favour and my clothes were woodland-coloured. The wind was anyone's guess among so many big trees and small clearings.

A low rise in the ground hid the cub for a few seconds. When I reached the crest it was on the other side of the burn. A pool where it had crossed was deep enough to have demanded a yard of swimming. An obvious path through the grass and well-scratched lichen on rock suggested a regular crossing point for many badgers.