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With Bear on our side.

In the ancient wood, deep in the rural idyll of God’s chosen county, Crazy the badger came out and declared to the world:

“The fox cubs across the stream are not innocent. According to Badger law, during a time of battle and war, there is no such thing as 'innocence' among the enemy.”

"In war, when our badgers storm the enemy, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Copse to kill even good foxes, that is, foxes that are ostensibly good."

The badgers had several setts on the eastern side of the stream in the ancient wood. They had been established in the wood for centuries. So had the foxes, their sworn enemy, but the badgers used ancient ‘law’ and propaganda to distort history to such an extent that lies would be an understatement. However to the rest of the animals in the area, fed on the daily diet of ‘news’ by the squirrels, it was the badgers who were the victims.

Over one thousand years ago, the badgers had witnessed the trapping and killing of a great brown bear in the forest. So had the foxes. The foxes passed their account of the event down successive generations by word of mouth. The badgers had written a book about it, and from this single event, had created a wood and forest view which was used today.

The Badger Book of Conservation [BBC] was used as a smoke screen for genocide, rape, incest, murder, stealing; just about any anti-social behaviour you could name. But to the world only some badgers were religious zealots, condemning such acts as punishable by eternal hell and damnation.

The foxes had many things in common with the badgers, but were hopeless amateurs when it came to wood domination.

“We shall never turn the other cheek. We will always get our retaliation in first. Our God is the one true God. All other Gods have to be destroyed.”

The same words were spoken by both fox and badger. But when it came to oratory, Crazy had Brook, the fox leader, beaten paws down:

“The BBC teaches the law is that all those who defy Sett [the Badger ‘homeland’] should be killed: and those that have the power of life and death should have them killed; and if this cannot by done, they should be led to their death by deceptive methods.”

Both fox and badger were b*****ds, but the badgers were clever b*****ds, and they had one massive advantage, or so they thought.

The Great Bear had been trapped and killed by humans. The foxes found the whole spectacle hard to come to terms with, and so passed down to their cubs a different version of events than the badgers. Unbeknown to both ordinary badger and fox, humans had written the Badger Book of Conservation!

Before he was murdered the Great Bear had shown all the wildlife in the area how to live together, to work though their differences, and to help each other in times of strife. When they were not fighting the badgers, most foxes behaved as if still guided by the wisdom of the Great Bear, acting compassionately and responsibly. As soon as the badgers started their propaganda war [it never ended], the local chickens dived for cover, the levels of fear in the wood went off the scale, and all creativity and traces of civilized behaviour perished.

To the badgers, the Great Bear was a false god. The BBC denounced him as a dreamer and con artist. The reality was that the humans had realised the Great Bear had been sent in by a power even bigger than themselves. Preaching love and cooperation was not in their interests. The badgers and foxes were ripe for manipulation.

Set up the badgers with the BBC, repeat the same [lies] message for centuries. Use the squirrels to feed the foxes and everyone else more lies, and by keeping the area in a permanent state of fear, draw in every other animal to take sides.

To almost all the great apes, who amongst them msany possessed much wisdom, the foxes and badgers were as bad as each other. OK, so the badgers wiped out 20 fox cubs, so what? Didn’t the foxes kill badgers too? And wasn’t the fox creed to kill all other animals who didn’t want to become foxes?

The humans made sure that the badgers, who had nearly been wiped out by the great forest fire of 1900, always attracted sympathy for their cause. History, smoke and mirrors would ensure almost everybody would be ignorant of the fact that the badgers were doing the humans dirty work.

Every year, the wood held a secret ‘convention.’ It was billed as a gathering of those concerned about the future of the forest, those who cared about conservation.

What wasn’t known is that it was attended by badger and fox, lion and gnu, cat and mouse. Indeed all the supposed sworn enemies spent days together being manipulated by humans.

However, what was also unknown was something far more significant was gathering momentum. Amongst the foxes, badgers, lions, cats, humans and every species on the planet were those who had absorbed the teachings of the Great Bear and his fellow visionaries, the great whales and elephants. And because these animals and people found that love and compassion resonated deep within them in ways that squirrel-speak never could, the manipulators began to get worried.

Squirrels were instructed by the badgers to become more ruthless and frivolous at the same time. More animal reality shows on squirrel entertainment, deny anyone with fox sympathies the right to speak. Get rabbits to destroy trees, but make it look like the work of rabid foxes. Stage ‘massacres’ and ‘atrocities’ every so often, and restrict movement around the wood under the pretext of ‘security’. Use these to justify the deployment of more ****house rats to watch over the wood population. Over-feed the animals and make them obsessed with their weight and health. Create diseases, then give out pills and rubbish natural ways of living. Denounce anyone who challenges wood law as mad and arrest them.

But the more the manipulators did their work, the more the cracks started to appear…

By looking within themselves, tuning out the bark-to-bark propaganda messages and spending more and more time in quiet contemplation, badgers and foxes were found side by side in setts; grey squirrels were seen feeding the young of red squirrels. Rabbits had confessed to destroying trees, and had set out planting hundreds of new ones. The persecution of wildlife by humans began to fade away.

The BBC was parodied by hyenas, and forgiveness took a permanent grip on the population.

“The fox cubs across the stream are our brothers and sisters. As Badger law has now been wholly discredited, we have no need for battles and wars that no-one ever really wins. We have at last found our true nature!”

JS, August 2006.