Elaine Lennon is a film historian. She is the author of ChinaTowne: The Screenplays of Robert Towne and is widely published in international film journals.

She has a background in television production and film financing and was a lecturer for a decade in film studies and screenwriting at the School of Media, Dublin Institute of Technology.

Idiopath

By Elaine Lennon

They were the kind of people who liked killing animals. Eating them too.

Bailey pondered his predicament, a pescatarian among Presbyterians in the wild. This morning as he heard the screams of cattle being carried off to the mart he stood stricken, coffee mug in hand. His thoughts turned briefly to the Holocaust and he shook his head.

His ears pricked at the political pontificating on the subject of the upcoming Presidential election on national radio. A commentator honked in nauseating Bostonese about the nominating process and the stranglehold of the main Parties and Bailey turned down the dial to spare the onslaught to his senses. The reception was cat anyway.

From the kitchen window he watched Roger stretching and snuffling around in the grass outside. Late summer is optimum badger weather. All that dry heat makes for a delightfully agreeable lifestyle with berries on the ground for better foraging, leafy gardens providing cover and sun to warm the animal’s sleek shiny fur. Roger purred with pleasure.

Bailey had a light bulb moment.

He put his mug on the counter and exclaimed, “By Jove, I think I’ve got it!” and slapped his forehead, for all the world like Terry-Thomas. Or was it Ian Carmichael?

He looked over to Big Chief Little Turtle in the enormous tank that filled half a wall and smiled. “Now I know how the Badger Defence League will make its mark!”

Roger was going to stand for President.

He made some calls.

Bailey marched into the Council offices, chest puffed out in anticipation.

He stood in front of a public representative with a proposal.

“He has a significant online presence. I wouldn’t quite say he’s reached the point where he could be called an influencer but his content is very engaging. He’s built his own brand very quickly. He’s got a great audience share in key demographics. Early adopters, LGBTQIABC, pensioners, golfers, students, scooter users, asylum seekers. They’re all responding positively. He reeks of authenticity. Cottagecore is his thing. That’s his constituency. That’s where the battle of ideas lies.”

Bailey didn’t know whether to keep going. Abbett was perusing the black and white ten by eights in the file Bailey had supplied in an A4 folder, old school style.

Abbett nodded. “Keep talking,” he said, turning the profile photographs one way, then another. “On this one he looks like a map.”

Bailey settled into his chair. “He’s already big on TikTok and Instagram – look!” He shoved his smartphone under Abbett‘s nose and showed him the Badger Beats Baboon video.

“If that doesn’t beat all! How on earth did you get him to move like that – on his hind legs?” asked Abbett, brow furrowing at the action. “He’s so big!”

“A.I.!”

“I hardly want to ask how insemination might enter the equation.”

“Artificial intelligence! I learned how to do it on CapCut. It’s great for social media. You should give it a go. Ideal for the attention economy. The first one we did was What do badgers do all day? Massive! And all he did was sleep!”

Abbett was glued to the image on a loop.

Bailey switched to the Badger Bait meme trending on TikTok. Roger was ventriloquizing the lyrics to the Kim Petras and Banks dirge Bait, replacing them with Bailey’s words along the lines Badgers get a bad rap. It was mesmerizing. There was a response song posted by a fan: He’s pretty fly for a black and white guy! It was based on another Kim Petras song, Wrong Turn and had its own dance.

“Play that one again? No, no, the other one, the one with the baboon in the blonde wig,” Abbett said. Bailey duly changed sites.

Abbett was entranced by it, over and over again.

“I’ll bear it in mind. Who’s the baboon? Reminds me of someone. I can’t think who.” He narrowed his eyes at the Insta action.

“Oh, that’s his Chewbacca toy. You should see him watching the Star Wars films – he roars like a bear whenever he sees him! He’s very empathetic like that. You know, come to think of it, that’d make a great idea for his YouTube channel – Roger watching Star Wars! Badger Gogglebox! Great revenue stream for the campaign! The Badger Bedtime Stories are already going down a storm!”

“He has his own channel! But what about his position?”

“I’d say it’s prone, most of the time.”

“I mean political.”

“He’s fairly neutral, I would think. He models good behaviour. All badgers do! Wouldn’t say boo to a goose. And he has niche expertise.”

Abbett frowned. “The cattlemen might have a problem with his candidacy. They could feel they have a score to settle. I wouldn’t go down to the mart with him.”

“Did you not see Brian May’s BBC2 documentary? He proved conclusively that keeping those poor beasts in their own filth in sheds and byres is the cause of T.B. and when they graze and do their business out in the fields the badgers pick it up from them.”

“I don’t watch the BBC, as a rule,” said Abbett.”Though I do love Queen. Your man has amazing hair.” He unconsciously brought one hand through his own luscious locks.

“Then you won’t have seen Darragh MacIntyre’s Panorama about the country’s woeful defences either?” said Bailey. “Ostensibly it was about drugs but it really concerned the hames of a place we let those gurriers run. I don’t mean you, of course.”

“The Party likes us to watch our own lot on RTE and TV3,” Abbett said

“If you don’t mind my saying, you could be describing the Soviet Union circa nineteen seventy-one,” said Bailey.

“That’s about the size of it,” said Abbett. “Personally I prefer a good nature documentary. Truer to life, as a rule. Dog eat dog. Back to business. What about his lifestyle? Anything to fear there? Any skeletons in the closet, that kinda thing?”

“Oh no, he never eats at home. The place is immaculate. He sleeps by day, prowls by night. Doesn’t venture out much in winter. You’ve probably seen him on the road lately though? This is a good time to get to know him. He’s around and about, like someone on a semi-permanent camping holiday. Canvassing won’t be an issue. He’s terribly social.”

“It’s most irregular. Unprecedented, even. I want to say … GUBU. But, now that I think about it, we did send a turkey to Eurovision. Why not a badger up in the Áras? There’s nothing in the rules that says a four-legged creature can’t run.”

“And Roger runs like an ostrich when the occasion requires. You wouldn’t believe the fleet foxes he has to contend with! Speed is of the essence. Although he does cooperate with them when necessary. So you could say he has social democrat leanings.”

“I’m not sure this is what they mean by vetting the candidate. If it were up to me, but it’s not. Do this for me,” said Abbett. “Come to the Council with a four-point plan. You’ll be treated with the same respect as anyone else. We do not discriminate against species. I mean, look at what we’re putting up.”

“I know you have your own candidate,” said Bailey.

“Maybe she’s a moron, but what can I say?” said Abbett. “She’s our moron. We’re stuck with her. Can’t abide her myself but orders from above. Competition is a good thing. And the novelty of it! So, you’ll get that document for me?”

“You can’t say fairer than that. I’ll have it with you in the morning.”

Abbett sighed a long lonesome exhalation that suggested a man exhausted by circumstance and sat back, nodding at Bailey to play him Badger Beats Baboon again. He chortled and shook his head in disbelieving delight. “This is great! Here, let me find it on my own computer. I could watch it all day!”

Bailey whistled as he exited the Council building, fanning a bunch of his Badger Defence League pamphlets on a table to set out his stall. There was work to be done.

Night followed day. Bailey busied himself with extracting points from his Programme for the Advancement of Badgers and pasting them into a Presidential Nomination Bid for the Council to peruse at their leisure. It was a simple plan:

“1. Stop blaming badgers for T.B. It emerges because farmers let cows wallow in their own filth.

Badgers care for the community and keep a clean abode. They set a good example for all.
Roger is an upstanding individual. He’s a family man who understands the difficulty of putting food on the table.
Living peaceably in our shared environment is Roger’s ultimate wish for all.”

Bailey thought he had covered all eventualities. Summer’s lease was almost up. He dropped off the plan at the Council office and once he secured a narrow vote of approval for Roger’s candidacy set about a campaign under the rubric Be Nice. Then there was the slogan: T.B. or not T.B? That is the question! It was ambiguous, self-deprecating, incriminating and confusing, like all the others, but since Roger’s surname was ‘B’ he would be on top of the ballot papers so Bailey figured they’d run with it. It was irresistible. It spoke to people.

There was a flurry of plastering posters on P&T poles with the help of local Green activists. Roger’s handsome fizzog in a getup out of Hamlet (rural origins implied) made it a winner. The truth was he couldn’t take a bad photograph.

The launch took place at a Farmers’ Market where Roger was kept a discreet distance from the food stalls and his nostrils twitched at the enchanting aromas. Bailey had him on a leash but his nails scrabbled at the ground to get going. He made sounds like a jump-starting engine.

Thereafter their ports of call would stay strictly local.

A week’s physical campaigning took place in the nearest towns. Bailey did his best to fake Roger’s signatures on the Make Ancient Great Again baseball caps. Since Roger rarely showed his nib in the daytime, Bailey used videos to attract voters and they got a huge number of hits.

The second week’s personal appearances had to be nocturnal. Those evenings were frustrating because Roger itched to go hunting. The last night was at an old people’s bingo session where he picked the numbers out of the ball machine. It was pure chaos. He yelped and grunted his way through the event. It was all over the internet.

At home a few nights later after posting updates, Bailey yawned through a light supper of Alpen while Roger ate a bowl of earthworms and apples. He was tired after a long day on a jook.

Bailey watched Roger sleeping in the guest bed by the Aga. The badger’s snout twitched. He was dreaming of foxes and his nails curled protectively around Chewbacca. Roger drifted off in the armchair beside him. On the quiz show he was asked, What’s your idea of luxury? He answered, Smoking in bed. Basil Brush presented him with the Golden Dagger.

Most people are awful. It didn’t take long before the veneer of social niceties were stripped back and they began baring their teeth.

The anonymous calls started.

“I’ll Roger your badger for you,” said one.

“Aren’t you the clever fellow,” said Bailey. He began to realise what he had put Roger in for and that was just the beginning.

“I’ll leave him black and white and red all over,” said another.

“You’re an absolute shower!” Bailey cried out in his best Haw-Haw.

It was unpromising, to say the least. He shivered. As the evenings drew in there was worse ahead.

There were noises outside. Footsteps on the gravel followed by nails tapping on the porch. A car doing a celebratory donut on the road, lamp light disappearing in a circular streak of yellow dust.

Bailey was met with a badger’s paw, nailed to the overhang of the front door. Blood dripped slowly forming little crimson puddles on the mat below. He would recognise that claw grip anywhere. He had known it forever.

His gut clenched in a ball and he keeled over in pain, not knowing whether to take down the tender paw or start running after the bastards that did it. And where had they crucified the little brock? Where oh where was the rest of Roger?

The news that a Presidential candidate had perished spread quickly through the countryside and reached the regional radio station where his death was announced solemnly with the customary obsequies. Abbett opined on an opportunity squandered while an animal rights campaigner Bailey never met made sinister accusations about murderous prejudice and dirty tricks.

Roger’s fellow mustelids gathered in mourning around the cosy hollow where he had lived. Otters, pine martins and stoats sensed a great atrocity had been committed against one of their own. They made a circle around Roger’s sett and purred and clucked and chattered in sympathy at the woeful death inflicted by vicious humans. It was a chorus by the children of the night. What music they made.

The days passed, as days do, with the election afoot and the gall of the gloating rivals even encouraging two of another Party’s faithful to canvas Bailey at home with a leaflet drop and a knowing wink.

“Where’s your candidate, then?” said Bailey to the gruesome twosome standing on the spot where Roger’s blood stained the tile. He hadn’t had the heart to wipe it clean.

“Want to discuss badger business with him?” said one apparatchik.

“I want to grab him by the pussy,” said Bailey.

They shrank away as Bailey’s body seemed to expand to fit the doorway. The truth was, his world had been reduced to a fixed point of revenge.

He was a shell of his former self. He had thought of a lot of things but not this. Political assassination wasn’t his bailiwick. He blamed himself. But he blamed others too. A reckoning was on the cards.

This was not going to end well. These things never do.

It was the Badger Moon. Bailey eased himself with dexterity from the sett where he’d been comforting Roger’s mate Roxy who was nuzzling her newborn cubs – the badger future. He installed a surveillance camera over their safe space just like the one Chris Packham had on Springwatch.

The night air was intoxicating. A barn owl hooted. Stars blinked sharply against an inky velvet sky. Bailey padded along the path towards home, light slicing through tree branches, illuminating his face smeared with boot black, eyes dark with intent, his nose sniffing out the predators in his wake, ears pointed for their every movement.

They weren’t long in arriving.

He stood foursquare in the door frame in his holey vest and sweaty Y-fronts, hobnailed boots tied with baling twine, a sledgehammer firmly in his fists.

He fancied an excess of the Devil’s Trumpet was driving their animus and readied himself for an unholy conflict of poisonous retribution. His eyes gleamed.

“Come on lads. A fair fight never hurt anyone. Come and get me!” He was poised for action. Half man, half badger.

Five figures emerged from the shadows.

They closed in.