Badger abroad in the city

Country Notebook

FOXES have made themselves at home in our towns and cities – so much so that Londoners see far more of them than most country folk.

Badgers, however, don’t seem to have made the leap from country to city – although where the city has spread out to swallow up their former rural homes, they can still be spotted among the buildings.

I can vouch for this after an early morning drive into Plymouth the other day. In the business park to the south of Derriford Hospital – once a ‘green lung’ with only Seaton Barracks to intrude on the greenery – I saw a large adult badger apparently considering crossing the road between the Land Registry Building and the Future Inn Hotel. He (or she) thought better of it, turned around and snuck back under the fence into the grounds of the Land Registry. I wonder if his sett is listed?