It was 5 o’clock in the morning. By its behaviour it could be understood that the arrival was not a resident of this den – it moved extremely silently, sniffed the surroundings, approached the den opening sneaking low down. A description as in a detective story because the eyes of the stranger are also covered by a black mask.

 

In the badger castle the intruder was not expected, but presumably the master of the castle quickly and loudly made a counterattack on the stranger. Of course we describe the events as seen through human imagination.

 

What we discussed on Tuesday was wholly speculative, we have no evidence except the fact that in nature similar things do occur.

 

The fact that on certain occasions foreign males destroy the offspring of rivalling males is a widely spread belief. A strange badger has no particular reason to enter the castle of another badger. Sometimes raccoon dogs as well as foxes live in the side tunnels of a badger castle and the masters of the castle tolerate this only if  the intruders behave extremely politely. The top predators, wolves and lynxes, will of course not miss the oportunity of trying to get easy prey from the badger den but they will not crawl into the castle.

 

One possible explanation to the intrusion of the foreign animal could be a smell of badger cubs coming from the opening. In the last few days the badger pair have carried new bedding material of dried leaves into the castle.

 

But as said, all the above remains just conjecture.