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| Badger on the prowl - photo by BadgerHero via Wikimedia Commons |
THERE has been an increase in badgers in Cleethorpes, Humberston and Waltham.
Like other mammals, including foxes and deer, they are venturing from their traditional countryside habitat to find foraging and breeding places in parks, gardens, allotments, playing fields, road verges and other open spaces.
Because they are timid and strictly nocturnal, they are not usually easy to detect.
But telltale signs of their presence include pockmarked lawns where they leave deep divots after using their powerful claws to dig for earthworms.
Badgers enjoy the protection of the law, and it is illegal to cause them harm or damage their setts.
But they are far from being universally popular because of their omnivorous diets which includes many kinds of vegetables.
Their burrowing activity can also undermine sea defences as at Humberston and railway embankments
They are thought to be responsible for the decline in hedgehogs - now seldom seen in North East Lincolnshire, even in flattened form, on the borough's roads.
Badgers bypass the hoggies' spines by flipping them on their backs and biting into their unprotected underbellies.
Time was when bristles from the coats of Brock were used in the manufacture of paint and shaving brushes and, in Scotland, for sporrans.
The meat of dead badgers - perhaps collected as roadkill - has been likened to ham.
Recent reports of their presence have come from the streets off Taylors Avenue, Cleethorpes, and other parts of the resort, plus Waltham and Humberston Fitties.
Badgers can live for up to 14 years, but many are thought to die as cubs. Corpses, young and old, are not infrequently seen on the sides of main roads.
In the early part of the last century, landowner George Caton Haigh kept badgers in captivity in the grounds of his manor house at Grainsby off the A16 road between Grimsby and Louth.
In his experience, they had wides tastes but refused to touch egg - even when mixed with other foods.
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| Badger sett at a site near Humberston |
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