Things that you dont want to see, Badgers!

Badgers!
Don’t let this sweet innocent “Who me?” face fool you. These are the scariest little balls of fuzz that inhabit the face of the earth. They will fight any kind of animal if there young are threatened. Badgers fighting bears have been witnessed many times. They weigh up to twenty-four pounds, with the male being bigger than the female. They can run up to twenty-four miles an hour in short bursts. Okay, you physics students, what is the impact of a badger weighing twenty-four pounds, running at twenty-four miles per hour? Don’t worry about it, you will die of fright before he hits you.

They are members of the mustelidae family, the same as weasels, fishers, and martens. The skunk used to be a member of the mustelidae family but they kicked it out and gave it it’s own family name of mephitidae. I guess they just didn’t want the skunk stinking up the family name. One other thing that I forgot to tell you about, Martens and fishers stink, and so does the badger. They smell kind of musky, like a dead skunk. Only not as strong of a skunk smell. Throw in a little rotten meat, then make it smell kinda’ sweet. That’s what they smell like. It’s not a pleasant odor. If you were out of your mind, and had one as a pet, the first thing that visitors would say is “What’s that stink” so you couldn’t fool the fish and game if you were hiding one.

When I was a young man, and had just set up my first household, I had a freezer that I kept all my wild food, and stuff from the garden in. One day a rancher friend of my boss stopped by and asked my boss if he had ever seen a badger. My boss said “no” he hadn’t, so the rancher showed him the badger that he had shot on the ranch. He put it in his Jeep just to show a few folks that he had killed one, because nobody would have believed him otherwise. A man has to maintain his credibility! Anyway, as he was leaving, I was thinking the same thing. I thought that nobody is going to believe that I saw a badger. So I asked him what he was going to do with it. He said he was going to throw it in the dump on the way home. I asked him if I could have it. He said “sure go ahead and take it”>. I put it in a plastic bag and stuck it in the freezer.

After that, when I had friends over, I would start a conversation about badgers, I would talk about how mean and vicious that they were. I’d mention that they would even back down a bear. Then I’d casually mention that “we have them right here in the Eel River drainage you know”. Of course that would bring up doubts about my credibility. I would say “Sure they live here, I even have one as a pet”. Then I would say “wait here, I’ll bring him in”, I would go out to the freezer, slip him out of his bag, wrap him up in a blanket, bring him into the house, hold him up to the persons face, then slip the cover of his face and growl viciously. I just loved doing that, the badger died with his teeth bared. So he was real scary.

Now you are probably wondering why the rancher shot him. Well, he found where the badger had dug up several ground squirrel dens. The rancher thought that it was probably a bear, so he started looking around and saw the badger. We all had guns in our trucks at all times back then, just for such an occasion. The rancher figured if it would eat a squirrel, it would eat a lamb. He was probably right. So he shot it. Better to be safe than sorry.

About ten years after that, I was on a refrigeration service call to Alderpoint, after that one, I had a call in New Harris, so I took the old road around the bottom of the hill. About half way across, I looked below the road and saw where a squirrel den had been dug up. I thought about the badger, but in my mind the ground was just too torn up to be a badger. So I jumped over the fence and walked down to look at the torn up dirt. Just as I looked into the hole, the most vicious growl that I’ve ever heard, combined with the most loud coughing and spitting that I’ve ever heard, came out of it. About then a highly pissed-off badger stuck his head out of the hole. Like Rosanna Rosannadanna said; “I could have died!” I turned around and ran back up the hill, grabbed the fence post, and was over the fence in one big lunge, fully expecting to get bit in the ass as I ran. I dove back in the truck and looked back down the hill. The badger had not followed me. I sat there, mentally putting my heart back in my chest, and thought about trying to get a better look, then I remembered my story about how fast and vicious that they are, and decided to be discrete, as you know discretion being the better part of valor, and I made a valorous retreat. Now, when I think about all of the people that I scared with my “pet badger”. I have to laugh at the come-upance that the badger in the squirrel den gave me.

The badger likes the edge of open grassy fields where they are likely to find squirrels, gophers and mice. The can readily dig squirrels out of the ground, and sometimes they dig themselves a burrow just to sleep in. When they are traveling, they might dig a new burrow every night. They store food for short periods in their dens. They are short and wide, and interestingly that is how you can tell a badger hole from any other. They build their hole wider than they are tall, just like they are.

Just the other day, I told the grandson of the rancher, that I saw a badger on his ranch, and he remembered the burrows and seeing a glimpse of it himself and was glad to have me verify HIS story. He saw it when he was very young, and nobody wanted to believe him.