David Stephen

Bodach is about a group of badgers that live on a mountainside in Scotland. The storyline mostly follows the daily life of the badgers, but also includes quite a bit about the humans who live on farms around them. One set of farmers is fond of the badgers and keeps a close eye on them, another farmer across the way traps them and makes their pelts into sporrans. I wasn't sure from the context if this was illegal, but it was certainly frowned upon. Not only do the regular farmers make efforts to observe the badgers, they bring field trips of kids from a local school to see the badgers and learn about them, they treat injured badgers found in bad situations, and when a man several miles away wants to repopulate a sett on his land that has been empty for years, they carefully trap several badgers and transport them for him. So I was pleased to find quite a bit about wildlife conservation and education in this little novel!

There's a lot of foreign terms used in the narrative, I'm not sure if they are Gaelic or Scottish, as there was no glossary (a thing I sorely missed) but I liked the extra local flavor they added to the story, even if I often had to puzzle out the exact meaning. A lot of other animals are in the pages, too- weasels and foxes, deer, owls, eagles and wildcats. Also vivid personalities of the farm dogs, and one particular overeager terrier named Tarf. Through the course of the novel one of the main human characters tries to teach Tarf how to behave at a badger sett- differently from what he expects her to do at a fox burrow. His methods and reasons I found an interesting side-storyline. But the badgers are the main thing.

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