Badgers causing destruction in town centre gardens

IN 1966 the part of Frederick Street where we were lucky enough to buy a home, a lovely residential area, our garden home to many birds as well as us, and visited by hedgehogs as well as squirrels.

I was able to walk across fields to the university, exercising my dog as I took the course required to teach. As I look back now these really were halcyon days.

Now I have to pay £50 per year to park my car outside my home, although I have to travel an extra half mile on a one-way system to reach it. Our traffic difficulties are worsened by so many local houses being occupied by students for whom the great area of land provided by Schofield at the birth of the university is apparently not enough.

I am now told that drug dealing is going on in our tunnel to Queen’s Park and that squatters camp behind our stretch of the street: As families who have small children perhaps the police should be more interested.

However, for me personally, now an OAP, these problems are not as disturbing as what has happened to my garden.

The college fields having been lost to housing the badgers that resided there have had to explore for alternative setts.

To my knowledge gardens from Radmoor Road to Frederick Street have been attacked, lawns uprooted tunnels dug down, and plants uprooted and eaten.

This year I have lost all of a hornbeam hedge I tried to add to my boundary together with most of the plants grown in earlier years.

I believe they are responsible for the total loss of hedgehogs and most of the birds - in which destructive effort they are aided by magpies. They even take the plants from pots on the patio and knock over my chairs.

Vandalism takes diverse forms, does it not? I am wondering why I pay my council tax!

Diana Brass