Betty and The Virus

Hello Betty Fans. You were probably wondering if I'd been run over as I have been quiet for a while. I am happy to say that a Badger's chance of being run over has diminished by 75%  since you Hupeople had to stay in your setts during the Lock Up, or whatever it is called. We Badgers and our creature friends think it should be permanent. 

We Badgers and Foxes and Deer and Hares and Rabbits are more confident about going out in daylight now and, as our new Cubs are full of energy, we can let them out to play in the sun and in the bluebells we love so much. The sky is less noisy, the air is less smelly and I am happier than I have ever been in my whole life, except when I was a cub and hadn't heard of the Kill-Cull.

But nothing is perfect because we have noticed piles of interesting stuff appearing on the lanes. This stuff is confusing. Some of it is white with doors and sometimes shelves, other stuff is like worms but made of plastic and metal, other stuff is sharp and shiny and we have to be careful not to stand in it because it will cut our feet. We have to keep the Cubs away in case they get stuck or hurt.   

Here is a picture from Farming Weekly:

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Mary is an expert on these things was talking on the radio about rubbish so I asked her and she said it is called Fly tipping. I have to admit that I didn't see any Flies..... Anyway the white stuff is fridges and washing machines . The worms are electrical wires and the sharp shiny stuff is glass, which we have come across before usually in the shape of bottles smelling of alcohol left in lay-byes by secret drinkers...

The reason why Flies and other stuff are being dumped is because the places where you Hupeople dump your amazing amount of waste are closed for The Virus.  The only waste we Badgers produce is poo and used bedding. Humans have very complicated lives... This Virus must be very powerful if it can change lives so much. 

Our little community of creatures has been having a jolly time at the bottom of Mary's garden.  There are even more Rats now because she is putting out bread and fat and jam to hide the homeopathic treatment for the Foxes' mange.  Mary doesn't believe in homeopathy but she is wiling to try anything to stop the Foxes suffering.  The Vixen is the most sick and really does need to have stronger treatment but she is feeding her Cubs so Mary can't trap her and take her to the Wildlife Hospital.   I wonder if Badgers can catch mange?  I must ask Mary.

Here ore some videos of out nights in the garden. The first is me with my Fallow Deer friends:

And here is the Muntjac

And here we have a Fox, a Muntjac and, of course, me

As the whole Human world has stopped because of The Virus we Badgers all thought Kill-Cull would be stopped too . This is not the case.  Remember how I didn't trust the announcement about the Kill-Cull being phased out.? Then we heard it was in fact being increased to 18 other areas and more Badgers than ever.will die. 

Mary has been busy writing to people asking them to put more pressure on the government to stop the killing. She wrote to Professor Godfray who did the TB review for Defra; she wrote to Tracey Crouch MP and Zac Goldsmith who are Conservatory MPs opposed to the Kill Cull; she wrote to Lord Krebs; she wrote to the Newspapers including The Guardian; she wrote to Louis Theroux; she wrote to George Eustice and finally to Boris Johnson. She also wrote to Farming Today on the BBC Radio asking them to do an in-depth investigation but she got no replies.  110,000 Badgers killed for no good reason and there seems to be nothing we can do.  Why does nobody listen and stop this cruelty and injustice to us Badgers? Probably because everyone is too busy worrying about the virus.  Or perhaps because Hupeople are just so wrapped up in their little lives that they don't care about anything else. 

And Defra has just announced that it will stop testing young calves before they are allowed to be moved around the country These are calves :



Oops!  wrong kind of calves.  These are the sort of calves that will be allowed to be traded around the county spreading TB:




Most Creatures think it would be best for the world if Hupeople died out with The Virus.  There are some nice Hupeople like Mary and her creature loving friends.  We will miss the nice Hupeople but, as a species, they do more harm than good, so we will learn to do without the good ones who help us when we are ill.  When I asked Mary's friend the other day what good Hupeople have done he said Poetry and Music and Art.  Well, I'm not sure that quite balances all the destruction of our woods and wild flowers and all the loss of species and the climate and the pheasant shooting and animal factory farming and cars and planes and sewage and chemicals on farms that make us feel sick and all those other things Hupeople have created such as corruption and cruelty and killing for fun. We creatures kill to survive not to feel powerful.


Here is a picture of The Virus from The New Scientist.   



It looks very pretty.  Who would think that it could turn your lives upside down? Perhaps if you Hupeople left Animals alone then you wouldn't have all these Viruses  At least 75% of new Viruses come from the way you interact with Animals; eating them, destroying their habitats and treating them like meat and food machines in factory farms.

Me and Mary are so angry about the continuation of the Kill-Cull and were planning to defy the Lock Up and go to Defra today.  We have decided to postpone today as Mary has important work to do in the next few days for a Human who has died  of The Virus.  So we will go next week whatever happens and risk Mary's life and being arrested for the sake of some publicity for the Badgers.  What else can we do?

Mary has now only got 12 Chickens because 2, Comet and Orlando, died last week.  Mary eyes leaked for days, mostly about all the suffering you Hupeople inflict on Animals in your factory farms. These are her chickens sun bathing. 

At the end of the Betty Log you can read Mary's tribute to Comet; I bet it makes you cry.  It would have made my eyes leak too but Badgers can't make tears.  If we could, then the countryside would be flooded with our tears.

Night Night,

Betty 🐾🐾🐾

­­­­­­­A Tribute to Comet

My name is Comet and I am a chicken, or perhaps a hen.  Either way, I am not very good looking; even my mother wouldn’t describe me as pretty. Still, when my humans took me in they saw past my bare bottom and focussed on my wonderful long tail so called me Comet. The name Comet is also very true of my behaviour because, being the ugliest chicken in the flock, I am the bottom of the pecking order so I had to learn to move fast otherwise the bigger chickens would have pulled out 

my remaining few feathers.  

I have had 2 lives and my second one started 5 months ago when I was put into a crate with lots of other chickens and then into a white van. We had heard stories about what happens to chickens when they are put into crates and we were sure we were taken to the happy chicken factory to be made into cat food. That’s what happens when we reach 18 months old and start producing fewer eggs. Luckily for us chosen few we were collected by some nice Humans who took us to their homes.

Oh and I have had such a good time in the Garden. For the first time in my life I have scratched around in mud and caught worms; eaten leaves, although the Human wasn’t very happy about losing all her seedlings; I have had a dust bath in dry soil, which is handy because being covered in dust means I’m less likely to get sunburn on my bare bottom.

Even better than all that, the Human gives us wonderful food and, every day at teatime, she gives us chopped grapes and banana. When we hear the word “grapes” we come running from all around the garden seeing who can be fastest to get most grapes.  My human knows that I will probably miss out in the scrum of bigger hens so she hides a few grapes and banana chunks behind a bush for me so I have a chance to have treats.

One of the games we all play is “get the cat food”. When the human leaves a door open by accident we dash in and can get thought 2 bowls of cat food in five seconds.  The cats don’t do anything but stand there stunned.  Because my Human thinks I need more protein to grow my feathers she secretly lets me in every day to have some cat food when the others aren’t looking. What I really like is that the big cats are scared of me. Nothing has ever been scared of me before. I really am a little Velociraptor.

I have a very good second life. I am a lucky chicken to have been saved by a Human.  My first life wasn’t good because I was bred for something called The Egg Industry. In the wild we would produce a couple of clutches of a few eggs very year, just like other birds, but we have been bred to produce over 300 eggs a year.  This isn’t good for our health. We were given the minimum boring food and some of us never even went out of our small cages to see the sun or scratch in the dirt, which is a chicken’s favourite occupation.  Now I have a lovely sage green coop full of fresh straw and I can come and go as I please.

What my Human doesn’t know is that the reason I am not growing my feathers after all these months is because I am busy growing something else inside and the thing I am growing isn’t an egg.  Still, I am making the most of every day and I am really glad that I wasn’t turned into cat food and had a chance to meet some kind Humans, Mary, Vanessa and Mike.  Most of all I am glad that I have dug up my own worms from the soil and have eaten grapes and bananas.

 Love, Comet           
     

Comet was put to sleep on Friday. She had a tumour that filled her abdomen. That is what happens to many of these rescue hens after constant egg laying. She is the 7^th hen I have lost to cancer or egg peritonitis in 18 months. I have twelve left. Hens in the egg industry have been turned into egg laying machines.  Their lives are cruel and short. Comet found her way into my heart and her loss is a tragedy, but she is only one of millions who suffer in the UK every year. I am glad that we gave her a chance of freedom and joy, even if that joy was short-lived.  Mary x