THE VIRON CONSPIRACY (JAKE SCARNE THRILLERS #4) by Lawrence de Maria Page A

although there were some scientists who disputed that. What was not in dispute was the typical British citizen’s affection for the 40-pound mammal with the broad white stripe down its forehead. That stripe, or “badge,” he learned from his research, was the basis for the creature’s name. Many people considered the animal to be “cute.” Brandman wasn’t prepared to argue the point, but certainly when it came to choosing between killing a few thousand badgers, or risking Great Britain’s dairy industry, it was bye-bye badger.
    But there is scarcely a wild animal or bird that does not have a British protection society of some sort in its corner. This, Brandman marveled, sometimes lead to interesting conflicts. For example, hedgehog rescue societies will not release hedgehogs into known badger territories, since badgers prey on hedgehogs. Indeed, they are the only known predators of hedgehogs. Brandman, no fan of hedgehogs, either, thought that was one of the badger’s few redeeming characteristics.
    The badgers, of course, have their own protection societies looking out for their best interests. Many people in Great Britain have a strong emotional tie to the badger . Every English child has read The Wind in the Willows , in which a badger, in dressing gown and slippers, is a beloved character. Brandman also believed that since the little animals are tough, fierce defenders of their burrows and offspring, capable of fending off packs of dogs or much larger animals, many of his countrymen saw in the badger a reflection of Britain in its “Finest Hour.” But he knew that badger-loving predated the Nazis. While hunting badgers is common elsewhere in Europe, badger-baiting was banned in the United Kingdom in 1835. Since 1992 it is illegal to kill, injure or capture a badger.
    In truth, for all their occasional fierceness, badgers are fairly innocuous nocturnal animals, rarely interacting with humans unless one of them breaks a leg in a badger burrow. When not eating hedgehogs, badgers subsist mainly on earthworms, insects and grubs; creatures that, as yet, are not on anyone’s protected list (although Brandman was fairly certain some soon would be). But occasionally a badger will attack a lamb or a calf and wind up biting both the target and the ewe or cow protecting the young. The bites often become infected. Rabies was once a problem. The worry now was bovine spongiform encephalopathy, the dreaded Mad Cow Disease, which had popped up in several local dairy herds.    
    Brandman couldn’t as yet prove definitively that the badgers were responsible for a recent outbreak, but they were the most likely suspects, since several had been seen among the infected cows, some of which had been bitten. But Brandman’s agency was taking no chances. The fact that none of the badgers autopsied so far had shown any signs of the disease was troubling, but he was sure the animal was responsible. For one thing, badgers had been responsible for an earlier outbreak of bovine tuberculosis. For another, the usual culprit in an outbreak of Mad Cow Disease among cows was their feed, which in the past had been adulterated with animal byproducts. In effect, the cows were cannibals, albeit three or four times removed. In addition to their normal diet of concentrated grains, soy and corn, the feed contained pellets made from beef byproducts, primarily ground-up bone and brain matter. Some of those pellets, it was assumed, contained the prions of previously infected animals.
    Which was why a small army of rifle-toting marksmen was roaming the woods surrounding the Gloucestershire towns of Cheltenham, Cirencester, Stroud, and Tewkesbury.  Predictably, the hunters had engendered another small army of placard-wielding protesters from the Royal Badger Protection Society. The marksmen were tasked with culling the badger population by 5,000. The situation was fraught with danger. Since badgers primarily came out of their burrows after dark, the