Chris Packham has revealed he
once smuggled a badger into his house as a child and hid it under his bed to
keep as a pet.
The Springwatch presenter and
naturalist, who lives in Norfolk with his partner Charlotte and two poodles
Itchy and Scratchy, revealed how his attempts to befriend the badger back
fired.
Chris, 52, revealed: "We
had a badger which I smuggled upstairs in my coat. I would wait until there was
something my parents wanted to watch on TV and sneak upstairs. The badger went
to sleep under my bed and everything went quiet then my dad came in and the
badger completely kicked off.
"I had some Subbuteo
stored under my bed and I remember my Man City team got completely trashed. Of
course the badger was banished and my dad was like, 'Get that out of
here!'"
Chris and co-presenter
Michaela Strachan both use to work on children's wildlife series The Really
Wild Show, and Chis hopes TV is still helping kids get discover nature.
He said: "Steve Backshall
does a great job on CBBC. He's very popular with kids and he's flying a flag
[for wildlife].
"I just hope the kids out
there respond in the same way to him [as they did us], because you do meet
people who say to you, 'I saw you do this thing to a cuttlefish once in The
Really Wild Show and I thought it was so good I started studying them.
"Children buy the books
but they don't engage with the animals. I'm not saying there's any diminishment
of their enthusiasm but the contact isn't there. I remember taking grass snakes
into school. I took a fox cub in once but nowadays they'd get the World Health
Organisation on it. They'd think the fox would eat the kid and the grass snake
was toxic." (Source)
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