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This is The Story of Badgers.
by Andrew Hume
This is The Story of Badgers. My last animal report was TheStory of Possums. I used to insist on calling them O-possums, but fuck it; I’m not an animal name nerd anymore, and possum sounds more like it was cooked over a fire by a gang of hobos. I was all about the little devils when I wrote their story. I’d been bitten by one while trying to feed it corn in my backyard; so I thought I’d been chosen to be a prophet of the possum for the people. I always thought that some moment would bring absolute understanding between an animal and myself. Like we would look each other in the eyes and say, “Yeah. I see you. I know you,” and we would totally fall in love and hug and hold hands and be gay all day. The moment happened to bring a possum, and I went for it, though I’d hoped it would be a horse or a really big dog because you can really hug the shit out of them. I’m sorta like Steinbeck’s Lenny with animals.
Badgers, however, are a different story entirely. They’re none too friendly and would never give a simple flesh wound rebuke for a silly attempt at soul awareness. A badger would’ve teased me and called me, “Doctor Sensitive”. Then the zealous bastard would insist on nothing less than a full-bored maul. They are indeed mean, but much like the Hessians, their history is relevant and must never be forgotten.
The badger’s tale begins 60 million years ago, when some other animal transformed into one. They are from the weasel family, and despite their carnivorous classification, are generally omnivores that subsist mostly on earthworms, roots and berries. Their name comes from the French, becheur, meaning, “to dig,” which they do shit-piles of, as they spend about half their time underground in setts.
They have course hair; dark, smoldering eyes and usually wear their shirts generously buttoned-down, as they parade around gesticulating about delicious food. (Psyche! That’s Italians!) Badgers are nocturnal and use their extraordinary sense of smell to find food. Their eyesight is poor, but, surprisingly, they don’t bump into stuff like logs and stones very often.
Badgers do most of their humping in February and most of their birthing five to six weeks later. The uterus of a female badger can hold multiple eggs, all fertilized by different males at different times, yet all birthed in a single marathon session, leaving one sibling with a prominent Roman nose and his sister, a cute little French one; while their brother has big lips. I think this whole “holding the fertilized egg ‘til I’m good and goddamned ready to begin gestating” is really original and cool. But the badgers are all nonchalant about it, just shrugging their shoulders and taking a drag, going, “Whatevs, this is just what we know, y’know?”
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