LAWN pre-school is employing subsurface steel fortifications to fend off badgers which regard the ground beneath their building as prime real estate.

The determined and ingenious animals have already breached wire mesh and supposedly badger-proof doors.

Meanwhile, the determined and ingenious humans refuse to be beaten.

And throughout the three year process, not one act of cruelty against an animal has been committed or contemplated.

There is something admirable and very British about all involved in this story, two-legged and four-legged alike.