Coyote and Badger hunting together Yellowstone

A long time ago before the first people came out of the ground to live on top of the earth, there were other people here that inhabited this place. They were animal people but people just the same. They had spirits and knew their place. They could not walk on two legs but then they weren’t supposed to because they were animals and each was made for the thing they would do best. They could talk and reason and they each had special powers that made them unique.

The coyote was the trickster, the song dog, the clever one and he was very good at telling stories and making the other animals like him. But he also did things that the other people didn’t like such as taking their food while they were laughing at his stories. He did not like to work and used his brain to make his way through life.

The badger was called the digger, and the fighter, for he was very fierce and very strong even if he was small. He thought of nothing but digging in the earth to find the little ones he liked to eat even if it took him all day. Sometimes he would dig and dig and the little ones would run away out of the back door of their homes. They had those doors just in case the badger would try and catch them. This would make the badger very angry and he would fight anyone who came near him. The other people left him alone and before long he became surly and didn’t care about anyone or anything but catching and eating the little ones.

The coyote had watched the badger for a long time. He saw how he would dig and how often the little ones would run away and the badger would go hungry. He thought he saw a way that he could benefit from the badgers efforts but it would require getting the badger to trust him and not fight him. He talked to the badger, but always from a safe distance, you could not trust the badger because he was always hungry and everything is a meal to the badger, even a coyote. He told him stories of other badgers who had friends that would help them hunt and these badgers were always full and satisfied and had time to find a mate and have families.

The badger slowly began to think about what the coyote was saying. It took him a while because his powers were digging and fighting, not thinking, Thinking was hard for him and usually just made him angrier. But soon he was thinking of a mate and having young badgers around him to show how to dig up and eat the little ones. He began to trust the coyote and asked how this could be possible.

The coyote who you can see, was very persuasive, told the badger of a plan where he, being very swift, would chase the little ones into their holes in the ground where the badger could dig them out. Then the coyote would quickly run to the back door and catch the little ones as they tried to run away. If the little ones saw the coyote sitting there as they tried to flee they would stop and go back down into their burrows where soon the badger, who had been using his great strength to dig, would find them and eat them. If the little ones didn’t see the coyote lurking near their back door and ran out into the meadow the coyote would quickly snatch them up and eat them.

As the badger took much longer to dig down and find the little ones, they had more opportunity to try and escape, and the coyote would have more opportunity to catch them with little or no effort. But the badger was also getting more little ones and thought that the coyotes plan was a very good one even though the coyote seemed to be getting the biggest share of the food. He was tricked into thinking this was a good plan by the artful story telling of the coyote.

So that is why even today, long after the original agreement between the badger and the coyote began, long after the first people came up into the sunshine to live on the top of the earth, you will sometimes see the badger and the coyote work together. Both seem well pleased with the bargain, although I think the coyote may be a little more pleased than the badger.