Mrs Badger and I: a long walk home...

As you may know, I am prone to walk home, it's roughly 6-7 miles or something strenuous like that. My work friend's claim I'm Bionic, others just say "Get a bike"

Here's the distance I walk.

The red line represents my route into/back from town.

So, the other night, I was walking home after work like usual, carrying a posh umbrella and two big heavy books 'living in the country' and '20th century photography' I found outside Oxfam. shh.

Anyway, I was 2/3 way home and I came across one of many of my personal roadkill holy grails.

Good old Meles Meles, commonly known as the TB ridden Common Badger.

Badger skins are 60 quid on ebay, fuck that. The Badger was freshly ran over, it wasn't like.. gross or anything. It had broken legs, ribs and jaw, it couldn't be more dead or FAT. It was atleast two stone, which doesn't sound a lot, but it is considering I had to carry her this far..

The Yellow dot is where I found the badger, the red dot is My house.

So, I carried the fat- See you next tuesday- for the remaining third of the journey. I didn't really know how to carry it so I wrapped it up in a hoody I found at Thekla and kind of rested it on my shoulders, which was proving difficult for I needed two hands to secure it though I needed two hands just to carry the books and the umbrella. It took my atleast an extra hour than it should have to carry it home. What it must have looked like is anyones guess.

So, The original plan was to put it in my room, but for some reason I decided not to, so I left it outside. under a plastic bag. The next day I pondered what to do with her.

So, I was forbidden to skin, eat or fornicate with the beast in the garden or anywhere near the house, mother was shouting the odds about germs and disease and flies etc...

Have you met my mother?

My Mother, Circa 1976. (guessing by the knitwear)

So, I took a deep breathe and skinned it. I skinned it to my skinning song. It was really difficult for she was properly mashed up. as in, things kept falling out, mainly Earth worms... which is funny as I didn't realised badgers ate worms by sucking up like spaghetti.

Anyway, the Bagder skin is curing over the fence of the bungalow across the road, hopefully it will be ready by halloween and I shall make something fun.

A few facts remain, Badgers do not have TB, foot 'n' mouth or Forest AIDS, This is evident as I cut myself whilst skinning her and I was bit by a flee and I'm showing no signs of plague.