Walled-In Pond: Awwwww-some, part 3

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Awwwww-some, part 3

This is very cool. But the asswipes in Blightey are trying to extirpate english badgers on the un-proven theory that they transmit some bovine disease.

Badgerz ROOL!

2 comments:

One Fly said...: I've never seen a friendly badger but they are cute and did not know they were able to be a little bit tamed.; 11:39 AM
Flying Junior said...: The badger is a strange animal that lives in some of the wilder parts of Great Britain. The badger is about the same size as the fox, but in shape he is much more like a little bear. He has a round bulky body, covered with a thick shaggy coat of grizzly grey hair; but his head is quite white with a broad black stripe down each side, which makes him look very odd.
But very few people have seen a badger, except perhaps at the zoo. Firstly, this is because there are not nearly so many of these curious animals living in England now as there used to be in days gone by; and secondly, because the badger is so shy that he seldom shows himself in the daytime, but waits until it is almost dark before he risks going out of doors.
He lives in the deepest, thickest woods, on the side of a cliff, or a disused quarry that has become densely overgrown with a tangle of bushes and brambles, where very few people ever go. In these wild spots the badger makes his home, leading a dull, lonely kind of life, with which, however, he is quite content.
The badger’s home is a large roomy hole in the earth at the end of a long winding passage. This the animal digs out for himself with the long curved claws on his strong feet. The badger passes the day here, either alone or with his wife and family, lying on a thick bed of ferns and leaves and moss, which he has dragged down below.
He is a lazy old fellow, and spends hours, sometimes days, comfortably dozing and sucking his paws. I don’t believe he would leave his warm cosy den at all if he were not obliged to come out to look for food when he is hungry. Like all other creatures, badgers are obliged to eat sometimes; so during the summertime when the nights are warm, the sleepy badger rouses himself soon after the sun goes down, and comes trundling out into the twilight to see what he can find for supper.
He is not very particular about his food; he goes snuffing about and snaps up anything eatable that comes in his way. Beetles, nuts, wild fruits, worms, snails, young frogs, or toadstools, it is all the same to the badger. He will grub up roots with his claws, poke his long snout into any bird’s nest that he finds on the ground, or in a low bush, and crunch up the eggs; or he will dig out a wasp’s nest, or a wild bees’ nest, from a bank, and gobble up the grubs in the combs. The angry wasps and bees swarm and buzz all round him, but the badger does not mind, for they cannot sting him through his thick, shaggy coat.
Baby Badgers are funny little things, just round fluffy balls, with tiny black and white striped faces like their parents. Like all young things they are fond of play, and on a summer evening may be seen rolling and tumbling about together, in rather a clumsy way, just outside the mouth of the burrow, or staggering about on their stumpy little legs, while Mother Badger keeps her eye upon them to see they do not stray too far away.
Father Badger does not appear to trouble himself much about his children. He sleeps in the daytime and goes off prowling about by himself at night, leaving Mrs. Badger to bring up her little family in her own way. She does not seem to mind this, however; in fact I think she prefers to be left alone, and she and her babies are quite happy and comfortable in a nice roomy nursery scooped out at the end of the long winding tunnel, while Father Badger has a dugout all to himself.

From “The Book of the Countryside” by F. Martin Duncan and Lucy T. Duncan, London 1961; 10:00 AM