Badger Yellowstone                            click to enlarge

Badgers are an enigma. On one hand they are cute, furry, friendly looking creatures that would seem to make great house pets but once you get to know them you see that they are fierce, predatory, angry animals that will tackle just about any thing, wrestle it to the ground and eat it. They do not make good house pets. Especially if there are other pets in the home. So if the kids have been after you with ” Can we have a Badger, please, Can we ?” Just say no.

It has long been thought that badgers should have gotten an Oscar nod for their role in “The Treasure of Sierra Madre” where they were instrumental in moving the story along. When the Mexican bandit leader named “Gold Hat”[4] (portrayed by Alfonso Bedoya) tries to convince Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart)[2] that he and his company are Federales: (courtesy Wikipedia) so they could kill them and take their stuff yelled “Badges! We don’t need no stinking badges!” when Bogey asked them to prove they were really federales by showing them those famous badges, movie history was being made.

The real story is the sound guy on the picture had been hitting the tequila pretty hard with Bedoya the night before and during the filming of that scene stumbled and stuck the mike in the dirt just as “Gold Hat” is saying “Badgers! We don’t need no stinking badgers!” When they fixed it in editing the editor mistakenly thought he was saying badges and the rest is history. Badges was in and badgers were out. Why Bedoya was saying badgers is unknown, perhaps it was a private joke between he and the sound guy. Maybe it was the lingering effects of the tequila. Maybe it was a language thing where the Mexican words for badges and badgers sound so much alike that Bedoya got confused. History doesn’t relate. Regardless of how it happened that line has been quoted by everybody and their duck since the movie first came out. Badgers made that movie. That line is the only reason that anyone even remembers that movie. It was in black and white anyway. Did the badgers get any thing out of it. Are you kidding? About the only thing they got was they were named the state animal in Wisconsin. Big Whoop.

A little badger lore may be in order here. Badgers live all over the place, especially in Wisconsin as noted above and all over the west. Contrary to what you may have heard badgers do not live in New York. They hate New York. I don’t why, it’s one of those enigmatic things. They eat almost anything, wait, I take that back, they will eat anything. Car batteries have been found in their digestive system, but what they really like, and I mean really like, are Ground Squirrels. Ground squirrels are like deep dish lasagna to them. They’re like a hot bowl of chili with beans and spaghetti on a freezing cold day after watching the Packers beat the Bears. If you’re a female just think of anything with chocolate in it. They really, really like them. If you want to find a badger just go to where ground squirrels hang out and follow the trail of pellets on the ground to their dens. Ground squirrels lose all control when a badger is in the area and embarrass themselves as they haul their little squirrel butts to their den. They rarely make it if the badger sees them. That’s why you see trails of pellets. Ground squirrels are very frightened of badgers.

Badgers have been immortalized in literature too, where Badger is a central character along with Mole, Rat and of course the amazing Mr. Toad in “Wind in the Willows”. It’s a rollicking good tale of four animal friends that have amazing adventures together. If it were a movie Badger would be played by Brian Keith when he was younger but would sound like James Earl Jones. There have been lots of other books and movies too like, A Badger also Rises, From Here to a Badger, I was a Teenage Badger, and many more that I don’t recall right now.

So as you can see, badgers aren’t just another pretty face. They’re full of contradictions, inconsistencies, Para-consistencies, ( I don’t even know what the hell that is but I’m sure Badgers have it) paradoxes, and traditional family values. But don’t be fooled, they will still eat your cat if you try and make them a house pet.