A Badger on the Road

POETRY: Nature’s struggle in the English countryside

Apr 01, 2025

She rolled and returned, as
my booted toe nudged her, as
she lay, softly dead, on
the tarmac, her silencer, a
cold slab, her mortuary, as
blood trickled stickily,
filthy, deep crimson, on
and on to the ditch.

She is claws, she is teeth,
she is muscle, beneath her
fur, black and grey,
striped white, pinkish spray,
she is black-dog-nosed,
she is pinned-back-ears-closed, her
eyes open, resigned, to
the wheels that would find her
just minutes ago, fifty
steps from her sett where
impervious to threat, she
came hunting for food
by the road.

Where the world’s risks are real, where
the outlook is bad, what a
majestic, fantastical morning she’d had, in
this early spring sunshine, her glad
bumbling trot, met the hedge, where
she dredged for sweet earthworms, the
keratin edge of her paws,
spurring down, underground, while
above her a buzzard and hawk
squawk and fight for their
space in the sky, from
where later they’ll hover and fly to
the corpse, to peck,
with the magpies and crows,
at her wounds,
at her tongue,
her eye,
sip the blood from her nose.

A badger is not a small thing to hit,
it’s a lump,
it’s a hound, a
toddler-sized target that lumbers
in front of delivery vans, with
daily, no-faily delivery plans,
obliviously driven by distracted hands,
they’re out on the street with
a schedule to keep,
momentous, they’re sleepless and…
wham,
damn,
from the seat: “What was that?”…
stick stick stick to the plan, as
bleaching, her eyes see the
van fade from view, on
its back door, so deadpan
the marketing stew, the
LIVE WELL FOR LESS!
the WE’RE FRESH TO YOUR DOOR!
the GOOD TO GROW!
NO EMISSIONS! and slowly,
lungs gasping, collapsing,
she lies,
no rise,
she dies.

Every wild thing that
escapes from the nest is
so perfect, so blessed with
precision, so pure that
there’s multiplied sadness when
it fails to endure.

And here am I,
impure, secure,
strolling by,
my curious eye and
my impotent toe, my
physical end, extended to
touch her, to check if her
own end impends, or
has passed.

I have witnessed the last of her,
I stride further on, past
the dusty-scraped burrow, from
which she has come.
Solemn and earplugged, I
walk with a will;
it disturbs me to think what
lives deep in there still.

LIVING IN THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE is lovely, of course, but there’s always scope for drama. Spring especially is a battleground. Creatures fresh into the world find an unforgiving place where nobody will be helping the police with their enquiries.

Yesterday morning I had to drive carefully around a mother duck in the middle of the lane, plapping along with her eight newborn chicks, all grey-black and fluffy, on their way to their first dip in the pond. In the sky, for the second time this week, I saw a hawk attacking a much larger buzzard – both birds of prey with a desire for an exclusive marketplace. The hawk’s bullying won easily. I’ve seen crows do the same thing to buzzards, in a mob.

The badger in this poem is my third discovery of “nastily vivid” roadkill, and each time I pull the yikes-face 😬 and try to go with the flow. But it can be grisly. The first was an adder, splatted by tyres but still intact enough that I could examine its face and jaws. The second was a hare, hit but not yet dead, breathing fast, moistly panting. It was truly nightmarish, and thankfully a passing farmer agreed to finish it off under his tractor-wheels. A revolting kindness. Amongst these ruined horrors, there’s the routine of seeing near-blind rabbits with lingering myxomatosis, and the scattering of feathers where a fox has torn into a pigeon. And those ducklings? I’ll count fewer of them each time I see them paddling after their mother on the pond. Maybe three will make it to duckhood.

As for badgers, they’re a controversial subject in the UK. Some (chiefly cattle-farmers) believe that they’re a carrier of bovine tuberculosis, and therefore support a population cull. Others dispute this, and want to avoid pushing them into endangered territory. I don’t know enough to take either side, but at the heart of it, when you get up close, my goodness… what magnificent creatures!

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Photo: By Hans Veth, on Unsplash