Me and Bucky

I guess I had to become a Hawkeye before I saw ever saw a badger. I never spotted a one back in my Wisconsin youth, which was just fine because had one crossed our path back then we wouldn't have looked anymore favorably on the confrontation than we would have had its striped carnivore cousin with the fancy tail and lethal odor stepped out of the woods. 

How is it I thought badgers fierce? I don't know. Probably because UW football usually is (basketball ain't bad either). One can actually imagine a defensive line made up only of snarling badgers. It's tougher imagining Bucky here as a shooting guard. 

Anyway, last Sunday, late afternoon, I was out for a walk and so, apparently, was a badger. (I don't know that either of us can be said to "stroll.") He came up out of the ditch not fifty feet away, got out into the middle of the gravel road I was on, and just stood there, crouched, even showed his teeth. He wasn't taken with me.

Size? More than a foot across, more like two feet, and flat as a frying pan on wheels. A fat guy, although he didn't size me up and suggest a diet and neither did I him. 

He didn't seem particularly cocky, although he is one of the few mammals on earth to have another named after him--the dachshund, dach meaning badger in German, where wiener dogs were bred for badger warfare, like Hawkeye linebackers. But there he sat, crouched as if perhaps I wouldn't see his portly self. 

We have a garden, which means we have rabbits--and where two or three are gathered, well, soon enough there's a baker's dozen. But I haven't seen any now for a while, which makes me think that this crouching neighbor of mine, Bucky, might have been bloodily engaged. We should be buddies.

We haven't seen any coyotes around either, but where there are rabbits, there are coyotes, the neighbor says. Did you know that at times, badgers and coyotes actually team up on a hunt? Seriously. It happens.  At other times, or so people say, they'll go for each other's throats. Amazing, isn't it? Sort of like old married couples.

I knew this guy had an immovable jaws, which means he wouldn't grind up my flesh. Instead, he'd rip it to pieces, as they do. And there he sat.  What do I do?

Years ago, when I worked as a park ranger, a little story got passed around about bears. "Bears?--we've got bears here?" saith the new ranger recruit said, first day on the job.

"Sure enough," the vet says.

"Well, what do I do if I see one?" the rookie says, chewing fingernails.

"No sweat," the old guy says. "Throw shit in his face."

"Shit," the kid says, "where will I get shit from?"

"Just reach back," the old guy says, "--it'll be there."

But this was  only a badger.

Still, there he stood. So I'm thinking the real remedy for bears is screaming, right? So I raised both hands and yelled at Bucky, who simply put his whole fat mass into reverse for three feet or so, then turned around and headed back in the long weeds along the side of the road.

All I did was yell.

Big 10 football starts this Saturday, I should really tell the Hawkeyes.