Can I interest anyone in a second-hand badger?

Animals
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The sangliers returned last night during the howling gales going on outside when we were tucked up in bed. The wind must’ve got them overexcited and they went to town with their excavations. Party central here. We had a lovely cat once who, when the wind got up, liked to rush up our pear tree and stay there for a few minutes with her ears back against her head until she complained about not being able to get down on her own. Hopefully we shall never see a sanglier up à tree but they seem capable of doing a lot of other stuff.

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Anything is possible…

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Better than a second hand beaver I suppose. :laughing:

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Especially a Brazilian one… :winking_face_with_tongue:

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Operation Debadgerise update: four of these little beasties now installed and activated:

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(Solar powered lights with IR motion detection).

Hopefully they will deter the badger - at £14.99 for the set of 4 on Amazon I reckoned they were worth a punt…

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Well I’ve just been out in the dark and tested the security lights and they work very well - they have a wide coverage and are triggered from a fair distance away.

Of course I am bigger and uglier than a badger, but there is a good chance it would trigger them I hope.

It then remains to be seen if it is deterred by the lights being on or not!

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I imagine, if it’s mating season, he might be a little inhibited?

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Could be a kinky badger… the mind boggles.

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Badger update 6th Oct:

I am pleased to report little or no digging overnight (it’s hard to tell which holes are new and which are old now).

I am cautiously optimistic.

There are four possibilities:

  1. the lights worked and deterred M. Le Blaireau;

  2. The nematode spray that I applied on Thursday has killed his food supply;

  3. He has already eaten all the available grubs in the lawn so there is no point in digging;

  4. The badger was away over the weekend “attending a conference in Torquay” with his secretary Miss Smithers.

Time will tell.

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  1. He was in Tours, dressed up (for a badger) and asking for Pierre
  2. He had a call from the Élysée
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Both very plausible. :smiley:

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Pleased to report that like Chris and his badger(s) that the sangliers here have moved on- fingers crossed. No new ruts in the garden in evidence. No other mole hills either since we bought the solar powered mole repellers in Lidl - other stores are available
Our french friends who hunt recommended a horrible homemade concoction too spray down the side of the lane outside our garden where there’s evidence of something coming in. Tried that today so won’t know yet if it works.

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How about using an electric fence?

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That’s one option but it would be an unsightly inconvenience as the garden is open to the driveway along one side (about 25 metres). Also badgers can dig!

And given that we now have motion-activated floodlights it would make it feel even more like a prisoner of war camp!

(No obvious signs of new excavations this morning so I am hopeful that Tony Blaireau has been deterred.) :slight_smile:

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The mortal enemy of astrophotographers everywhere :grin:

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Fortunately they are each equipped with a new-fangled device called an on-off switch. :smiley:

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Fiendishly clever :grinning_face:
It’s when neighbours have them that it becomes desperate. Luckily, I don’t have that problem.

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Tony Blaireau update:

Like the Terminator, he’s back. a few new holes this morning. Maybe he’s getting used to my lights, or else the weekend in Torquay with Miss Smithers didn’t go too well.

I have some more nematode stuff so will give that another go when the current spell of dry weather ends.

But I think it’s probably a lost cause at this point. @Lois 's suggestion of an electric fence is probably a good one but in the interests of neighbourly relations I am reluctant to fry next door’s cat. :slight_smile:

And having had a plumber come yesterday to fix a leaky outdoor tap we now have a small inundation under the gas boiler in the garage…

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Sounds like things are …er… progressing? Perhaps not quite in the directions you were hoping :thinking:

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Really you won’t fry the cat, it will just be an ouch and it won’t want to come back. I bought an electric fence to stop my puppy digging under the chain link, put there at great cost to both contain him, and conserve him. He was only stung once and now respects blue string. That was six years ago.

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