Our new garden visitor

Sunday morning I came outside and found this:

And this.

All over our lawn.

"I can tell you now that wasn't me."

Monday morning I found this:

Pepper plants dug out...

Luckily the only plant with an actual pepper on was spared.
It's small but it's there.

"I said I didn't do it so quit looking at me."

After some research I found the cause. This:

I know this because of the above pictures as well us our friend digging himself a "toilet" in our herb garden. Nice. It's what they do apparently.

Badgers are out looking for food during spring and autumn and there's not much going to stop them if your garden is one of their preferred restaurants. They will dig under fences and can climb very well so there's no need for us to even put up a fence in our back garden (which opens onto a field with only trees and shrubs shielding it). Saves us that expense at least.

The only options are either a very tall fence which also goes quite deep underground and which needs to be quite strong to withstand badgering from the badgers or an electric fence. We've decided to let the badgers be and see how it goes. 

Improving our lawn will apparently get rid of some larvae which our badger is currently enjoying as you can see form the photos. We'll see how it goes once we've got veggies planted. If it will only be certain times of the year we might be able to make a plan.

Oh and in case you were thinking of a different way of getting rid of a badger, they're a protected species so no, you can't do that. They have actually been voted the best liked British mammal. We'll see how much we get to love our badger.

Cute, until it's your garden he visits next!