True story:
I was at work one night on the rapid response car and received a call to an address in the middle of nowhere, the call was a ‘chest pains’ emergency and i set off with haste….came round a corner and hit a badger….i didnt stop, i was being sent to a person potentially having a heart attack after all.
When i arrived on scene the patient was describing cardiac type pain and showing adverse clinical signs (pale, clammy skin etc)….an ambulance was sent to convey this gentleman to hospital.
When the crew arrived they said they’d passed a badger that was in a terrible state down the lane, looked paralysed and was dragging its back legs….they hadnt stopped either due to the nature of this call, i said that i had hit the badger on my way to the emergency and one of the crew said that i wasnt needed here anymore and should go back and sort it out.
I drove down the lane and came across the badger, it was alive but looked a mess.
I reckoned the kindest thing was to put it down so i looked in the boot for something solid to hit it on the head with….i found a crow bar from the kit we carry to help gain entry to locked properties and set about the wounded animal….turns out a badger is quite a hardy animal and repeated blows to the head with a crow bar was not killing said animal quickly or humanely….i had also become aware that i was stood in the road next to an ambulance car in full paramedic costume wielding a crow bar above a dying badger, it wouldnt look great if another car came along and saw this macabre scene….i quickly moved the badger to the front of the car and positioned its head under one of the front wheels.
I got in the car and drove forward….the sound wasnt pleasant but it did the trick, the badger was dead and i moved it into an adjoining field.
Later that night i bumped into the crew at A&E, the guy who asked me to go back and sort it out asked how the badger was….i recounted my story to him but stopped when i noticed his face aghast at what i was saying….turns out when he said to go back and sort it out he meant take it to a vet….i had understood his instruction to ‘sort it out’ in the more sinister faux gangster movie interpretation of the phrase.
Oh well.
Anyway back on topic, there have always been various culls at various points in history, some are successful and some have unforeseen repercussions….i cant see too much of a problem with this, i dont see what benefits a huge number of badgers has and why their numbers cant be trimmed.
