Vagueness and the Aftermath - A sporadic diary

Continued

Nev lifted Ranter out of the boot by the scruff of his neck and tucked him under his arm, then he headed back toward the badger set. I looked at my friend and he looked back at me. By now the penny had dropped. Badger diggers are not hunters, they are sadists. Of course they would never admit it, not even to themselves but these men just enjoyed inflicting pain suffering, and they wanted us to watch.

I would like to tell you that we stepped in and rescued Ranter, but we didn’t. We were young and these men were really intimidating, I suppose the truth is we were just too scared.

We followed Nev back to the badger set and he plonked Ranter down in the bottom of the crater and stood back. Rantor just stood there, slowly wagging his tail. They pushed him down into the hole, using a spade to poke him in deeper and deeper until the Badger was crowded enough to attack him. “See” Nev said as the badger tore into Rantor, “Won’t tackle the badger, won’t even defend himself, he’s a complete coward”

Eventually the spade was removed and Rantor came trotting out, then he just stood there looking up at us, bleeding from half a dozen fresh wounds and slowly wagging his tail.

“Right, lets do it,” said Nev, and with that he picked up his spade and started to remove the last few feet of earth between the badger and us. One of the others brought the three young dogs down close to the hole. He had removed the leads and now had them on a single length of cord, which he had passed through all three collars. He held both ends of the cord in his hand so that he only had to release one end to slip all three dogs.

A moment later the badger bolted. The dogs were slipped and they flung themselves into battle.

It wasn’t a kill as such, more a fight to the death that the badger was doomed to lose. He didn’t die easy, and he did a fair bit of damage before, broken and bloody, he finally slipped into unconsciousness.

The dogs were dragged off and put back on the leads, and Nev swung his heavy spade at the badger, administering a belated, but thankfully painless coup de grace. Then, without warning he raised the spade again, this time his target was Rantor who through all this had been standing quietly, wagging his tail and bleeding.

“This is all you deserve, you cowardly bastard” Cried Nev, as he brought the spade crashing down.

At the last moment, Rantor stepped to one side and the spade thudded harmlessly into the ground. Then, with a single, and it seemed to me sorrowful backward glance, he trotted off into the bushes.

Nev yelled for him to “Get back here this minute” bur he failed to return so we spent a quarter of an hour or so doing a cursory search. We didn’t find him, and I was relieved when Nev said, “Come on, it’s time we were gone, yon road’s getting busy, there will be people about soon”. “What about Rantor?” My friend asked. “Sod him” Replied Nev, “If he gets found and taken to a vet, he will be put down anyway”. “If I find him, can I keep him?” My friend asked. Nev turned to face us. “Listen to me” he said pointing his finger at us, “You do what you like, but remember, you’re here on so and so’s word, (He named the man who had given us his address) there are no comebacks to us whatever happens, understand?” We assured him that we understood and with that they rolled the dead badger into a sack, gathered up the tools and the dogs, and then they were gone.

For a minute or two my friend and I just looked at each other in silence. It was a surreal moment, like none of it had really happened. Then we set to with a will. We searched and called for what seemed like hours, indeed the sun was high in the sky when we finally gave up. “I bet he’s miles away by now poor bugger,” I said to my friend. “Yes” He replied, “And who can blame him?”

We walked back to where I had parked my pickup and there he was, sitting near the driver’s door, quietly bleeding and wagging his tail.

We went to a vet that I knew well, the one that tended to my horses. When he saw the state of Rantor he went ballistic, it was all we could do to stop him from calling the police there and then. We half explained the situation to him and managed to talk him round.

With a last murderous glance in my direction he turned on a powerful overhead light and proceeded to examine the little terrier’s horrific injuries with infinite care. He was a big man, but I saw him wipe away a secret tear. Rantor, for his part just stood their bleeding and wagging his tail.

We really should have had him put to sleep. We knew it, and the vet knew it, but neither one of the three of us could bring ourselves to say it. “Leave him with me for a few days” The vet said, “I’ll see what I can do”

We rang the vet every day, but all he would say was “He’s not ready yet” Ring me tomorrow” Then after about 10 days he said, “OK, come and pick him up, I can’t do any more for him”.

When we saw him, we couldn’t believe our eyes, the vet had worked a miracle. He proudly showed us how he had rounded off the severed lower jaw, even bringing the skin up to form a sort of crude lip. It didn’t stop his tongue from lolling through, but it did help with his eating and drinking. The socket with the missing eye had been cleaned and closed, along with a dozen or so other wounds, and the remaining portion of nose was healed and healthy.

“I packed so much penicillin powder into those wounds” The vet told us, “at one point he was more medicine than he was dog, but it was worth it, we didn’t get an ounce of infection”

There was nothing he could do with the remains of Rantor’s ears except cut them off, but all in all, that was the least of his worries. “This is one of the most even tempered dogs I have ever seen” The vet told us. “He loves everyone” “Not only that” He went on, “He’s had some painful treatment, but not once has he ever so much as shown his teeth, He’s one in a million”

Rantor went home to live with my friend. Everyone adored him, especially the children, who used to dress him up in dolly clothes and make him lie on his back in a pram. He loved every minute of it. It was a treat to see how well it turned out, a real fairytale ending.

There is a bit of a twist to this tale, a sort of ironic postscript.

About 5 or 6 years after Rantor came to live with my friend, a vicious Alsatian belonging to a man who lived in a house about half a mile away broke free of it’s tether one day. The next we knew it was on the caravan site and had bitten a little girl’s arm. It didn’t get a chance to do any more damage though, when the little girl screamed, we looked outside just in time to see Rantor launch himself at the Alsatian like a missile and clamp himself onto it’s neck.

We ran outside and laid into the brute with anything that came to hand, it fled taking Rantor with it. In all this time he had never been known to even growl, but now, beside himself with rage, he was snarling like a wild animal and hanging on for grim death.

Ten minutes or so later, after the little girl had been examined, pronounced to be not seriously hurt, an dispatched to the hospital for a tetanus shot, our thoughts turned to Rantor. Just as the search party was setting out, he came trotting back down the lane, quietly bleeding and wagging his tail.

Rantor lived until he was 14, and that was the one and only time he ever attacked anything. Does that mean he was a coward? I think not. He was the bravest dog I ever knew.