The shooting will begin in the next few days. Badgers had better keep their heads down. (The cows, themselves, better keep out of the way because I wouldn't like to be around when men with guns start popping at black and white targets in the countryside!)
I wrote The Badgers of Beechen Cliff, but I'm not a strong animal rights fanatic or anything. I don't like to see cruelty to animals. It's as simple as that. But underneath that simple philosophy is a concern as much for human beings as animals. What do we become if we are so easily prepared to deal with a problem in such a crude way. How can you look at a badger through a lens, and - without needing it for food - kill it.
The main reason for writing the story was to interest young people, and the not-so-young, in the kind of imagined, internal life of animals. Of course, it's anthropomorphising the creatures but maybe that's way we learn to feel for them, to be on their side.
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