As a boy scout back in the early 70s I did my survival badge during our annual summer camp which that year was in Dorset, somewhere near Bridport, I had to build a shelter in the woods out of anything natural I could find, and spend the night in it, luckily it was a hot dry summer and it didn't rain, or I would have got drenched as the shelter was patchy at best, but I slept in it and in the morning woke up to find a group of scorpions warming themselves in my open hands and on my chest, there was no need for me to dismantle the shelter, it was completely destroyed in seconds.
Many years later and I was looking after an Edwardian hospital in the middle of nowhere near the south downs, it was a private hospital, originally built for sufferers of TB, that had gone bust and was going to be redeveloped as luxury apartments, we had to patrol the grounds of about 150 acres and as it was pitch black at night, you had a fantastic view of the milky way. One night as I was doing my patrol, as I came to an area that had several large ornamental pebble gardens I heard someone or something moving about on the pebbles, my first thought was that I had found someone breaking into the empty buildings to steal copper pipes or something similar, so I clicked on my maglite and started shining it around but I couldn't see anyone, then the sound of pebbles moving against pebble was right in front of me, I shone the torch down and almost at my feet was a great big old badger, I don't know who got more of a shock but we both went our separate ways very quickly.
