Frighteningly it's getting on twenty years ago, when I lived maybe a mile further out of Cheltenham than today, with a fairly big garden, badgers were regular visitors. They come after dark - and out there it is dark, so it's easy enough to never know about them (the giveaway is finding holes scraped in the lawn with their long claws, looking for worms or grubs, that weren't there the day before). I forget what made me look in the first place, but night after night I'd see a badger, sometimes two. I was told they like bread and peanut butter, so I got a stock in and spread the one on the other, broke it into pieces and scattered it around the lawn at dusk, and within about half an hour of it getting dark a badger or two would arrive, snuffling around after bread with peanut butter on it. I'd be at my bedroom window watching. Gradually I tried things - opening the window; taking photos with flash - they didn't seem at all concerned at. I watched them from downstairs; opened the back door; tentatively, quietly, stepped out. At one point, two adults came regularly. And eventually they came with two young. And I slowly, quietly went out until I was standing on the lawn, badgers snuffling about me, coming to within inches of me, entirely unconcerned. They seem to be short-sighted, more concerned with smell; though one wouldn't think their hearing would be quite so poor and I did make noise. And my sister was there one night and I introduced her to badgers, and she came out too. And we could talk, softly, to one another, and if their sense of smell is acute then obviously they knew we were there, yet all the badgers were concerned about was the food.
Urban badgers can become habituated to humans but in the wild they tend to fight first and ask questions afterwards. Years ago I was out shooting rabbits at night with infra red night vision (vermin control was part of my job on the farming estate I was living on. I was in a very large flattish field and set the rifle up on the tripod to scan ahead through the scope to see of there was any rabbit activity ahead - you can see eye reflection form hundreds of yards away and it saves a lot of wasted walking. No rabbits but I noticed about a hundred yards away a large boar badger barrelling towards me. I realised that I was standing on his regular badger run. The wind was in my face so he couldn't scent me and purely out of curiosity I kept the scope on him (I wasn't going to shoot him, obviously) just to see how close he'd get before he realised I was there and what he'd do when he did. He almost ran onto me. He got to within about 6 feet before he realised something was in his way. He stopped for a moment then barked and snarled and lunged at me. I coughed and once he realised I was human he though better of it and turned tail and scarpered. But it showed that his first instinct was aggression. Be very careful about letting pets out at night if you get regular visits from badgers. They'll kill any cat instantly and most medium sized dogs if they're in the mood.
Very sharp teeth and the claws look like they belong on a bear. Related to weasels, stoats and, I suppose, ferrets. I certainly wouldn't want to put one down my trousers!
Searching my email archives for my badger pictures. Apparently I never sent any. I did find lots of others I'd forgotten about. Something I noticed a decade or so ago, and made this composite: I called this one Galery Southwank.
The Tudor cottage After the dustcart reversed into the hedge. (The hedge recovered fully in a couple of years or so).
