BADGERS
‘The meek shall inherit the Earth’. Er…I’m not sure this is true. It is the honey badger who shall inherit the Earth. Whoever thought to call this ferocious creature something so sweet as ‘honey’ had clearly never encountered one. The Afrikaans have it right, they came up with a perfect name for the honey badger: Ratel. The Ratel is a South African Infantry fighting vehicle. No other description for the thick-skinned, armoured honey badger could be more satisfying.
I had seen clips of a badger chasing off leopards, a badger fighting with a highly venomous Cape cobra, being envenomated, having a little mid-morning snooze to sleep off the venom and then waking up to snack on the snake for lunch! These guys seem impenetrable, so I was uncertain as to how I should deal with my unwanted visitor. They are also very smart, as I was to discover.
The Glee badger discovered my high-class chicken restaurant and try as I might, I just couldn’t get one step ahead of him. I had corrugated sheets dug into the ground so he couldn’t get under those. He just dug under the door. I put building blocks under the door. He dug into the shed and entered the chicken coop from there. Relentless.
The sudden visits from the badger terrorised me, my dogs and of course, the chickens. Being a compulsive namer of all things that I cherish (note the badger does not get a name) it was dreadful to be met with all the dead bodies of roosters and hens who had a personality and a name. My chicken family went from 37 to 12.
The first sign he was around, I would be woken up by the dogs shaking and pressing close to me, then, scratching sounds as he methodically dug and laid all the stones and ground in a meticulous pile. The screams of my birds. A nightmare.
One night, this routine I had begun to dread began again. I had had enough! I put on my boots, strode outside in my big girl broeks, but not before grabbing my hiking pole. I switched on TS Eliot’s lights which lit up the chicken coop and ran screaming like a neanderthal, beating the corrugated sheets on the side of the coop with my hiking pole and yowling for all I was worth! I probably lost a few more hens to heart attacks! That little monster kakakakakaaa’d at me, so I hit the sheet again and kakakakakakaaaaaaaaa’d back. I turned around, walked off muttering, drove Eliot up to the coop for good measure and then went back to bed.
I never saw the badger again.
BABOONS
Right back during Covid, I described some interpretive dancers or tall men dressed in ape suits. I have since discovered they were actually baboons! I am used to the grey Chacma baboon. Google tells me my lot are brown Chacma baboons. But they are not brown, but pitch black, huge, with flowing manes and as far as baboons go, they are quite good-looking! Still, not welcome! I have heard baboons have no respect for female humans, I don’t know how true this is and wasn’t about to put it to the test, for the baboons in the area had sadly lost their territory to all the trees being cut down for human consumption. There were reports that the baboons were getting closer to our valley, and several had been seen hanging about at Meanie Man’s house, which is the farm next door to Glee.
I was not about to give up my monkey valley to baboons. The Vervet monkeys are my delight, they are such little clowns, not a bother to me at all, in fact they have protected my chickens from birds of prey. I love to watch them play catch with the Knysna loeries and when they step across my little stream into the open, I shout: I see you! They fall on their backs, feigning surprise and flop about like fools before scarpering away. I adore them. So, you can see how an influx of baboons would just not gel here.
But, what to use as a deterrent? I wracked my brain for weeks. Then, as solutions are always found, I came up with my ingenious secret weapon. I rummaged around in my unpacked boxes in the shed and found it! I set it gently under the kitchen counter at the ready and waited.
As expected, a few weeks later, two scouts came sauntering down my road, their manes blowing in the wind. I sprang into action and retrieved my secret weapon……..a tambourine! I marched up the road toward those big monkeys, banging that tambourine and chanting: Go away you naughty baboons. Go away you naughty baboons. They took one look at me, ran straight through the barbed wire fence, never to return again!
A JOT OF JULIE JUJU RECAP:
Want to get rid of a badger? You will need:
A bright light as an element of surprise. A pair of sturdy boots. Big girl pants. A hiking pole. A huge dose of crazy and a mighty neanderthal roar.
Want to get rid of baboons? You will need:
A confident march. A good, no- nonsense British chant. And of course, the secret weapon….a tambourine.
You’re welcome!
(Thank you Mr Angel, Martiens, for the night cam pics of your badger.)
