Posted By FarmerJ on August 19, 2009

If there’s one thing we try to do out here on the farmstead, it’s to respect and co-exist with the critters that share our land.  With the exception of the snapping turtle crossing the front yard last summer, we’ve done pretty well at commingling with our critters ~ until this past weekend, that is.

The adventures began last Tuesday.  It was a lovely morning, cool and quiet, so Abigail and I were sitting outside on the front patio shucking the 104 ears of sweet corn Darling Husbie had picked for me the night before.  Well, I was shucking the corn.  Abigail the Toy Fox Terrorist was terrorizing my little toads and lounging in the flower beds.  I was just about finished when something caught my attention around the slough by the square foot garden.

It was a little too far from where I was sitting to tell exactly what this creature was, but I knew enough to put Abigail inside before she noticed it and went chasing after it.  She may have one up on the toads, but I didn’t think she’d fare so well against this guy.  By the time I ran upstairs, grabbed the camera, and ran back down, he had meandered a little further toward the slough.  I zoomed in as much as the little camera could and snapped this picture.  But, no matter how much I magnified the photo once on the computer, it wasn’t clear enough to be certain what he was.  A possum?  No.  A coon?  No.  Hmmm.  Well, at any rate, we went about our business ~ mine primarily being to transform those 104 ears of sweet corn into 42 cups of cream style corn.

So, briefly fast forward to Thursday evening.  Darling Husbie, Abigail, Peanut and I were on our favorite stroll around the property by the back slough.  As we were crossing the slough back there, Husbie and Peanut noticed something about the same time ~ Husbie with his eyes, Peanut with her Beagle nose.  Hunkered down, trying to blend in with his surroundings, was a badger.  Peanut, completely ignorant that this thing would be her demise, was following her nose and her instinct down the slough bank.  Husbie called her back while I scooped up Abigail, and we continued on our way to the barn area.  Mr. Badger didn’t seem like he wanted too much to do with us, either.

Now, Husbie had to work all weekend, and was actually gone Friday through Sunday.  I had a Family Readiness Group function and was going to be away the majority of Saturday.  That left the care of the pups to Dominic.  Something you should know about these two crazy canines is that they don’t just ‘go outside’ when you open the door.  No, these two bolt full speed practically through the door in some kind of unequivocal excitement.  So, I felt it important to make Dominic aware of the badger we’d seen in the back and the harm it could do to them, and advised him to scan the yard before opening the launch pad door.

Fast forward a little more to Saturday afternoon.  My cell phone rings.  It’s Dominic.  There’s a tone of excitement in his voice ~ a sense of pride.  He announced that he had saved the puppies from the mean ol’ badger.  He spotted it along side the house in his rearview mirror as he was leaving for a friend’s house.  I should add that during my talk with him about the badger and instruction to ‘take care of it’ if he saw it, I told him to make sure that he did it humanely so that there was no suffering.  Okay, so remembering what I’d said, coupled with wanting to make sure he ‘got’ it, Dominic ran inside and grabbed the 12 gauge pump shotgun and a round…of buckshot.  Needless to say, our oldest son, the sharpshooter, hit his mark and the creature was no more.  The pups were once again safe to go outside bolt through the door.

I got home later that evening and ventured out to where Dominic explained all this had occurred.  I didn’t really want to see it, but I wanted to see it.  Ugh.  Yeah.  There it was.  Well, it didn’t really look like a badger to me, but having never seen one up close, what did I know.  I did know that it didn’t look like the critter Abigail and I had seen by the front slough Tuesday morning.  Husbie was due home the following afternoon, so we’ll just wait.  He’ll know, for sure.

Sunday afternoon rolled around and Husbie made a brief appearance for lunch.  We went out to observe Sharpshooter’s ‘trophy’ and within 20′ of it, Husbie said “that’s not a badger.”  Great.  What the heck is this thing then?  Oh, to burst the boy’s bubble that he hadn’t really ‘saved’ the pups from the badger after all.

It was an honest mistake.  Any city boy turned country boy could have made the same mistake.  Really.  No?  Okay, probably not.  Husbie had to return to work, leaving me to be the bearer of bad news.  Moms have a gentle way of doing that, right?  Crushing a boy’s pride?  So, when Dominic called me later to check in, I carefully, tenderly blurted out that what we had here was a case of a woodchuck being in the wrong place at the really wrong time!  Poor woodchuck!

But also, in all seriousness, what we still had was a badger loose on the farmstead.  And with the dogs, a badger is just not something we can co-exist with.  We realize it was just trying to live, like us, but we also realize there is no getting near that thing to relocate it, either.

So, Sunday evening my two sharpshooters headed out ~ this time with the .22 rifles ~ while the girls and I stayed at the house.  They headed out to the back slough where Husbie and I had last seen Mr. Badger.  They searched all around to no avail.  They had pretty much called it quits for this particular evening and were headed back to the house.  As they were crossing the front slough, something caught Dominic’s attention.  Something in the same area that had caught my attention Tuesday morning.  Husbie got it in his sight through the scope.

Yep.  It was Mr. Badger.  May he rest in peace.  May our dogs once again be able to go outside bolt through the door without me worrying.  May our country boy remember how to identify the difference between a badger and a woodchuck.  And, may I eventually accept that this is the way it has to be sometimes when you live the country life.

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