Letter From Badger

Tom Cox

12 Mar 2026 — 13 min read

Dear Patrick,

I imagine it might come as a surprise to you to hear from me in this way. Because putting pen to paper is considered so damn old-fashioned these days and I last saw you not even three hours ago. But also for... the other reasons. How are you? I mean, genuinely, how are you? You were looking a little thin today at dawn when I watched you carefully removing slugs from the lid of the mixed plastic recycling before the men from the local council arrived to collect it. Are you absolutely sure you are eating properly? I know how it can be for a person living alone and taking a long term break from the dating scene. Blocking out the time to prepare a balanced nutritious meal can easily become relegated to the status of an afterthought. “Who is there to be impressed by this performance, besides me?” you might ask, standing over the chopping board as half a packet of stale Salt’n’Vinegar Snack-a-Jacks sings its sweetly accessible song to you from a cupboard literally centimetres from your left knee. But, Patrick, please - and I mean this - do remember to look after yourself.

What has become your instinctual method to measure the weeks, months and years, Patrick? Are you like me and do you look at the ripening hedgehogs, freshly emerged from their hibernation, and think, “Joy of spiny joys, spring is finally upon us!”? I suspect not. As you close in on the cockcrow of your fortieth year, has the collection of that mixed plastic recycling become its own stark calendar, consisting only of ever-accelerating Wednesdays, leading to a lychgate marked ‘That's All, Folks’? I note that they changed the lids on the containers in December. These new ones click shut more securely than their predecessors. I completely get the logic behind the decision, but that doesn’t mean I do not miss the loose dry-roasted peanuts and stale hummus I would often find in the containers. Since the change was introduced, the slugs stuck to the top and sides of the council’s mixed plastic containers have become a form of solace to some of us. When you remove those slugs and place them in a nearby bush or tree, have you stopped to consider the bigger picture? Do you realise that, the moment your back is turned, a blackbird will surely be along to gobble those slugs up?

A blackbird possesses, on average, a body that weighs between 80 and 125 grams. A body so petite requires little sustenance to continue functioning. My own weight, as of last weekend, is 11.3 kilograms. Hashtagjustsaying.

Sometimes we believe we are doing the best for others but, in the process, there is another party we have omitted from our estimations who becomes the victim of our charitable intentions.

Do I believe I am above such flaws myself? Lord, no. You might remember a certain night last autumn when you were rudely woken by a snorting sound from behind the beech hedge on the south east perimeter of the garden, kind of like the noise two pigs would make if they’d been eating hot gravel then opened a newspaper at a page that offended them. That, I must confess, was me and Bristly Bob from Lockwood Farm. I told myself that, by protecting your land from Bob, who is a character of scant administration or hygiene, I was doing our special little neighbourhood a favour, but I did not think about the impact it might have on your sleep. That, after Bob and I ironed out our differences, our conversation evolved into an even more vocally expressive form of revelry and cameraderie can be blamed to an extent on the season and what that meant about the number of fermented apples that could be found on the ground, but to an extent, also, on me.

I apologise for that night and its escalations. Noise, I am all too aware, can be a form of violence. What might be the sound of rapture to some is the sound of war or migraine to others. Part of being a considerate individual who is sharing a living space with someone else is recognising that fact. I know I have not always been perfect, but I am trying my hardest to be better. And I hope my efforts will be reciprocated. It is your firm belief that ‘You’re The Voice’ is the most emotionally rousing and structurally watertight of the power ballads the Australian singer John Farnham released during the 1980s. It is your additional belief that Farnham’s choice to introduce a bagpipe solo halfway through the song is what elevates it from “awe-inspiring” to “transcendental”. But sometimes, prior to putting the song on for the seventh time in one morning, might you not stop to ask yourself, “Is my critical analysis gospel here, or could it in fact be, like, just one opinion, in a big planet containing innumerable other, sometimes radically contrasting, ones?” I note that, two birthdays ago, you received, as a present from a close relative, a pair of over-ear headphones. I note that those over-ear headphones do not appear damaged. It would be a shame to continue to leave them to gather dust on the bookshelf above your stereo.

Please do not mistake this letter for a complaint. It is, as you will see, anything but. We have now shared our compact hillside for almost two years, and in that time I believe we have each got to know one another’s habits, quirks and rituals well and co-existed rather successfully in what can sometimes be a testingly intimate environment.

I know you have watched my nocturnal activities many times on your trail camera. Likewise I have observed you, no less carefully. Sometimes, on summer nights, when you leave the living room window open and drift off on the sofa, I will sit outside and listen to the sounds you make while you are asleep. Has anyone ever told you that you have the sweetest snore? It puts me in mind of how a mouse might snore, if a mouse was disturbingly massive. A mouse who does not live in a Dutch windmill but a terraced English cottage, and feels zero need to use clogs to boost his perceived height. A rather raffish mouse who is almost six and a half feet tall, even without clogs on.

I am aware that, because of the trail camera, you know more about me even than many of my peers among my own species. It’s entirely possible that we have already seen each other do things no other living being has seen us do.

I am thinking here, just off the top of my head, of when you tried to replicate the bit in the video for John Farnham’s ‘You’re The Voice’ where Farnham dances backwards into a shiny curtain and you dislodged the Venetian blind in your dining room, causing it to come unscrewed from the wall and collapse on you.

So what I’m wondering is: Why not let’s say to hell with it and take everything to the next level here?

July 12th. I believe I’m right in remembering that is the day your birthday falls on. Four months today, precisely. 39, yes? Which I believe is generally thought to be a full year before life begins. But who says you can’t cheat and begin a bit early? I don’t see anyone holding an official starter gun. Do you?

I am afraid I can’t specify what I’m asking you today. Who can say exactly what they want out of a relationship, before it begins? Is not the entire point the adventure of finding out? But, in case you are concerned, please do not think I am speaking about anything of a carnal nature. That cannot happen, nor would I wish it to. Yet sometimes, when you’re out in the garden, wandering around in your teetering sweet gangly way in your swimming shorts and those fluffy slippers of yours that a vainer man would have replaced several years ago, a need takes hold of me. If I were to try to pinpoint it, I would describe it as the need to run at you extremely fast and rub myself frantically against your shins whilst making an ecstatic guttural noise. But it’s a little more than that, too. I’m not quite sure what the “more” is. And that’s what I finding so thrilling right now.

I hope I am not scaring you. I have no wish to injure your legs. They are the most extraordinarily beautiful legs I have ever set eyes on, and have just the right amount of hair attached to them. I would maybe lick them, just a bit, if you allowed it. And if I did you would probably be surprised at how smooth and soft my tongue is. Far smoother and softer than the one belonging to that cat from next-door-but-one who you sometimes encourage to take extra mature cheddar from the palm of your left hand.

One day, perhaps we could share our own extra mature cheddar. Just you and me.

Look, I don’t want to get ahead of myself… get ahead of us. Blue sky me your feedback asap. Don’t overthink it. Just reply with your first, honest reaction. I might be crazy, but I think all this might make a wild kind of sense.

One time I was behind the beech hedge, at dusk, and you had a friend over - I think it was that guy Jason, the one who always wears the woolly hat with all the loose threads and drives the old truck with the really great-smelling exhaust pipe - and I heard you talking about me. You used “it” when you were referring to me which I suspect was your attempt to be considerate and employ a pronoun that wouldn't cause offence: a gesture I appreciated.

What you said was, “Sometimes I see it run across the lawn. It moves a bit like an old neglected footstool would if it had just discovered its own sentience.” I might be wrong, but I thought I heard a special affection in that description. It touched me in a soft place where I am not often touched. I don't think I've felt anything like that since the time I discovered you'd signed the petition against the cull.

You and Jason went inside a little after that and you lit a fire. You did this without firelighters, while sitting on a Kilim rug. Turkish, I believe. I wondered what it would be like be on that rug and submit myself totally to sleep, knowing I was in a safe, loving place where nobody wished me harm. I wondered so hard, it began to hurt, almost as much as it hurts when I think about what it might be like to run at you extremely fast then rub myself frantically against your shins while making whichever completely uninhibited noise I need to.

Sometimes, on those warmer nights when I sit outside and listen your totes adorbs enormous fuck-off rodent snore, I wonder what you are dreaming about. Is it a special version of Wind In The Willows directed by your somnambulant self? Is it a world where woodland animals and men of pronounced lankiness - and women of pronounced lankiness, of course, and men and women of all other heights - live in more mutually beneficial, harmonious proximity? You might not suspect it but I dream in pictures too. You pop up in the dreams, sometimes, and I find myself wondering, “Are dreams little hedgeholes into our past lives?” In these dreams I sometimes stand close to you, adjusting the buttons on your shirt, or wiping a small flake of puff pastry from your cheek. I am up on my hind legs, always. Sometimes there’s a barbecue. I wake up from the dreams feeling avuncular but in them I often wear hoop earrings and the short leather jackets of a young new wave aunt. I dole out sweets to squirrels from my handbag but I save the best ones for you. I don’t know what it all means.

Will you agree to join me, in finding out?

Are we going to sit in silence? Are we going to live with fear?

We have the chance to turn the pages over. We can write what we want to write.

Has it ever occurred to you... maybe, just maybe, we have to make ends meet before we get much older?

I ask just ten conditions. Ten, for the number of months I have been hesitating about writing this letter. And also ten, because that’s how many conditions I do actually have.

ALWAYS purchase the crunchy peanut butter. NEVER smooth. The Whole Earth brand is my favourite but I’m not majorly fussy.
Hedgehogs must be kept out of the garden at all times. And, no, in case you’re wondering, I’m not like Bristly Bob and I don’t do that to them, but let’s not introduce temptation into a situation where temptation need not exist. Same goes for guinea pigs. Bit of a moot point, though, I imagine. Not seen one for years. Do people even still have them?
Put me unconditionally in charge of your meals. Open your mind, relax and float downstream. You might be surprised.
Ditto your mixed plastic recycling. Although probably with fewer surprises.
Ditch the trail cam. It’s an invasion of privacy. Especially when the results end up on social media. Would you think it was okay to take a sneaky photo of one of your fellow humans eating then put it on your Instagram page without asking their permission? No, you wouldn’t. So don’t do it to me. Besides, you’ll have no cause to clandestinely observe my habits and rituals any more. You can do it openly, to your heart’s content. I’ll be right there beside you, on that Kilim rug in front of your fire. Just don’t record it and put it online. Live in the present. Experience me sleeping in front of your fire as you taste the food I have painstakingly prepared for you. Make the moment yours and yours alone. Be content with that.
(Which is really an extension of condition 5.) Do not EVER take ANY photo of me while I’m eating, even if it’s during our own mealtimes and you think it might be funny-cute. “Funny-cute” is the close cousin of “brutally unrecoverably humiliating”. A photo of an individual biting into food often has calamitous unanticipated knock-on effects. Learn the lesson of Ed Miliband and his bacon sandwich.
Legs of no individual inside the relationship must be shaved, on any account, with the sole exception of a medical emergency.
Mondays, and only Mondays, shall be named ‘John Farnham Day’.
Mondays shall also be named ‘Me Going Out And Doing Errands Day’.
Never get rid of the fluffy slippers. And I mean never.

Catch you on the flipside!

Craig

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