Wiry Kum ?
Yet another instance of foolish, frightened, cruel slaughter has been recorded. A stray badger in Folkestone has met the fate of the unhappy wombat that seared the inhabitants of the south coast sonic weeks earlier and was shot off Reachy Ilead. To call out the police to shoot a stray animal is a pitiful resource to which no self-respecting community should resort. Animals do not attack mankind. That may lie stated as a generally applicable maxim. Even lions and tigers do not, though there are exceptions. It has been known for a stoat to attack a gamekeeper : and recently a controversy arose between a reviewer and an author on the plausibility of a badger corning forth to fight. In a corner any animal will fight, but a wild animal at large in a strange place is much less dangerous than, say, a dog or a cow. One great wild- beast hunter and -trapper is recorded to have routed a lion that showed signs of attacking him by beginning the attack ; and he said that few, if any, animals, certainly not the lion and tiger, will face a man who has the nerve to move towards them. This is quite certainly the right attitude towards a dog, Alsatian or other, that threatens to be vicious. It is also true, as someone has recently suggested, that a dug which shows no fear of a lifted stick will retreat from a pointed stick. I have tried the experiment more than once.
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