What the Light Showed Me
People think a badger is a country animal. I was born under a garden shed in Bristol, nine minutes’ walk from a bus stop, and I have never seen a hill I liked.
The allotments behind the railway line are mine. Not legally. Legally they belong to about forty humans with small keys and large opinions, but I was there first, and I work nights.
That October the ground was soft, which is the best news a badger can get. I came under the fence at the usual place, where the wire has been broken since spring. First, the compost heap by the water tanks: apple cores, tomato ends, half a loaf that somebody had thrown out. Humans have an extreme attitude to bread. They either eat it in three days or they carry it out to us in a bag, and I have never understood the part in the middle.
Second, the sweetcorn. The corn was on tall plants and I am not a tall animal, so I did the only sensible thing and leaned. The plant came down. The impact was louder than I wanted, a green crash and then a plastic tub rolling away down the path, and I stopped and listened for a long minute. Nothing. Somewhere a train went past without stopping.
Third, and this is where the evening ended: the beans.
The beans grow near the top plot, beside the shed with the new box on the wall. I know now what that box does. I did not know then. I put one foot on the path and the whole world turned white.
I have been chased by dogs. This was worse. There is no smell to a light, nothing to bite, nothing to run from except everything. I went back under the fence so fast that I left a good deal of fur on the wire.
But here is the part the humans get wrong. They believe the light frightens us away. It does frighten us, for about four seconds. Then we stand in the dark at the edge of the grass and wait, and while we wait we look at the bright square of ground that the light has kindly shown us, and we count the beans.