My wife came home from a late shift tonight and told me that there was a badger dead on the main road, not more than 100 yards from the end of our road.
I’m not particularly keen on going out at 11.30pm and examining dead badgers, but I couldn’t leave it there. Plus, now that I’m part of the Bedfordshire Badger Network I have a responsibility to monitor road deaths in the area. Packing camera, tape measure and disposable gloves, off I went.
The badger was very close to our house, and fairly close to the one that was killed back in October. I regularly track a badger in the field next to this spot (I followed a lovely long trail here only two weeks ago) so I guess that it was either this badger or one from the same sett. I suspect that the sett is in a private wood on the other side of the road, hence the badgers seem to cross the road regularly.
I dutifully moved the badger to the verge and examined it, recording length (59cm excluding tail) and sex. Determining the sex proved more difficult than I imagined, and I resorted to taking pictures and then comparing them to books when I got home. I’m pretty sure it was a female, and the relatively small size and condition of the teeth suggests an immature one (fully mature sows average 72cm, apparently).
In some ways it was interesting to get a close view of a badger, but I hope I don’t have to do this sort of thing too often.
Tales from the Wood - The Diary of a Badger Watching Man 
it is an unpleasant (understatement) task , take some comfort that this unfortunate creature didn’t crawl away to die slowly – or worse
still very sad tho 😦