Friday 16 April 2010

Scarface earns his supper.

Today we had a visit from Sarah, Alex, Jason and Katie, and this evening we were privileged in having Jason and Katie for a sleepover while Alex and Sarah visited friends. Jason is getting into wildlife in a big way, and is very knowledgeable for a seven year old, but until this evening he'd never seen a live badger. We let him stay up quite late, but there was no show by 9 p.m. and Jason decided he'd go to bed, but we were to wake him up if one came, and if we were successful in getting his eyes open, he'd come down.

Scarface arrived at 9 minutes to 10 and with a bit of difficulty Pam bought Jason out of his sleep and he made it down stairs. Scarface was contentedly munching his way through his peanuts and took no notice of the movement at the window.

Once his eyes were fully open Jason got down to the Badgers level so he could see him really well. It is a great experience watching a child get a first experience of watching an animal like a Badger.
Tonight Scarface was a star. Sitting down and then taking a stroll before coming back for seconds.
He did have a look at me when I was taking pictures, but unless there is movement he doesn't seem to recognise anything through the window. You can see the healing is nearly complete and he'll soon loose the Scarface nickname.


This video clip was taken at the same time as I took the picture of Jason watching Scarface. I suppose that sitting down like that shows that he feels quite safe. I've been told that the ultimate sign of contentedness in a Badger is when the sit and scratch. I have seen them doing this in the garden when we fed them in the back garden a couple of years ago, but the two that are visiting this year haven't yet obliged with a good scratch on video.

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