A Badger Story

Allen
- August 07, 2002

howdy dan,another pleasant article. you lament the fate of the badger here in wisconsin, but i'm here to tell you the doggone thing is thriving on the central plains. where i'm from in southwest and western kansas, the badger is doing quite well. his digging ability IS to be marvelled at. out in western kansas, many roads are hardened clay and gravel. absolutely hellish stuff to try and dig through with a shovel or posthole digger, but low and behold, you drive down one of those roads and right smack dab in the middle is a pile of dirt and badger hole. he was digging up ground squirrels.are they fearless? absolutely. i used to go running through the pasture in western kansas. streams flow periodically due to the rains and most of the time they are just clay grooves in the pasture which make for excellent running trails. one day i was running through a particularly deep channel and noticed many holes in the sides of the bank. about that time a badger suddenly leaped halfway out of his hole, hissing with fangs bared ready to rip to shreds whatever got close. i almost had a heartattack and resolved to never run down that channel again.often, if i ran in the early morning, just when the sun is coming up, i would run with my two weimeraners and we would occasionally catch mr. badger trying to scurry home to his hole after a night of foraging. at first, off the dogs would go to do battle with the badger. well, after a dog has run a couple of miles (on a warm morning), his body does something to get rid of heat. the dog's tongue begins to elongate and hang out about a foot. well, the first time these dogs caught a badger, they had been running for awhile and their tongues were halfway to the ground. it didn't take much battle before the yelping and whining filled the air and soon enough the dogs were caught up with me, both bleeding from their now perforated tongues. weimeraners are very stubborn dogs. it is their defining trait. therefore, it took about a half-a-dozen run-ins with mr. badger before they finally decided life was just better if they let mr. badger be.so, dan, lament the loss of prairie habitat here wisconsin, but rejoice that mr. badger is doing well in the central plains.Allen