This is a badger. This badger is dead.
Still with me? Good.
You can see he's (she's?) next to a road, so I'm going to assume it got hit while crossing. No blood in this instance. There was a couple of weeks in April where I kept seeing roadkill badgers - probably they had just come out of hibernation and were a bit groggy and sleepy so not properly obeying the green cross code. It wasn't gross or disgusting, just dead. I suppose that besides my Christian perspective of death, I take the view of Hogarth in The Iron Giant; "It's bad to kill, but it's not bad to die" so I don't have the aversion some people might have. A couple of days later I passed the spot again and it was gone, removed by the council and thrown away. Obviously I didn't touch it, but it was still pretty cool to be able to inspect such a reclusive and rarely-seen animal up close. They really are beautiful creatures.
Here's something else beautiful (and not dead).
Foxgloves. These ones are growing in our drive, So lovely, so iconic... and so very very poisonous. Don't eat them, they are quite capable of killing you. I'm not sure why you would try to eat them, but don't. Nevertheless, I'm not going to pull them up, I like them. I think it's good to have something to keep a weather eye on. Gives you a healthy sense of respect and perspective.
Death is always something sad, something we know in our inner beings isn't quite right, isn't supposed to happen, but at the same time it's very much a part of the world we're in. Death is a part of everyone's journey, and whether or not you choose to worry about it, try to delay it, or attempt to dodge it altogether, there it is still. Part of the paradox, part of the dichotomy, part of life.
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