Spring Cleaning

I was accosted, politely, by a woman in a charity shop who announced cautiously 'Excuse me, aren't you the man who collects dead things ?' I explained that yes I was a man who collected dead things and as it turned out, much to my inner excitement, that she had recognised me from the local newspaper, as there had been a number of articles about an exhibition of my work. She asked if I would be interested in some badger skulls she had seen and of course I said that I would be. She explained that whilst on a walk she had seen three badger skulls in a heap of soil cleared out of a badger set and she would pick them up for me if she saw them again. In cycling home from work in the weeks since I have also seen heaps of soil outside badger sets and rabbit warrens in what seems to be evidence of a spring clearing of the underground rooms in preparation for the coming of new families. As I later covered my own garden, in the tatt and rubbish I was clearing out of my sheds as I dismantle them to make way for a possible house extension, I reflect on just how similar us mammals are in so many subtle unspoken ways.