The badger is a weasel

Al Lowe
Contributor

The badger is a weasel. This seems rather odd, because it doesn’t look like a weasel at all. It has a rather strange shape. Its legs are very short, and its fur spreads out to the side, so that it looks like a walking mat. When it walks, it waddles, and when it runs, it trots in a funny sort of way.
A good sized animal, it can run up to about 30cm in length, and weigh in at around 10 kg or so. Its colour is mostly gray, with prominent black and white stripes on its head.
At one time, this was a very common animal on the great plains of Canada and the US. Wherever there were prairie dogs - ground squirrels - there were badgers. Its range in Ontario is (was) confined to two areas, the flat country of southwestern Ontario - Essex, Kent, and so on - and the area near Rainy River. The badger’s lifestyle determined where it could live.
The badger spends a lot of its time underground, and it is very well equipped to do so. Its front legs are heavily muscled, and the front claws are large and curved for scooping out earth. He uses these front legs as though he was swimming through the earth. When the badger decides to dig, he goes at it with a great will. They say that the soil he kicks up can go as high as five feet into the air. He is almost as fast as some of our digging machines.
Now this badger lives on a wide variety of things, but his favorite seems to be ground squirrels. He goes after these the same way he does everything else - by digging. He will dig a hole at a squirrels den, which he can do in a very few minutes. If he lucks out, he digs another hole, and then another. The end result is that all that is left of the poor squirrel is his head and his tail.
Badgers also eat other small mammals, cottontail rabbits, mice, voles, and he is not above eating small birds and eggs, along with frogs, snakes, large insects and some huts and mushrooms.
About those tunnels. They can be up to 10 feet deep, and maybe 30 feet long. There is always a sleeping chamber, carefully lined with grass and leaves. Before little ones are born, the female cleans out her area and lines it with fresh stuff. They are quite fastidious, too. They dig shallow toilet areas outside, away from the tunnel area.
The European badger is a different, but similar species. In England, badger homes are called ‘setts’, and may contain a lot of families. Some of these sets have 20 or 30 miles of tunnels, and have been in use for a century or more.
There are movements afoot to protect and encourage badgers. One is in eastern BC. Another is in southern Ontario, which is intended to bring back the tall grass prairie that used to be there. Along with this is a campaign to renew the population of badgers. The estimate is that there needs to be about 500. They are protected from shooting and the burrows are protected from damage.
The Badger - Taxidea taxus - is a strange animal all round. Short, squatty, flat to the ground, a digging machine with a reputation for a bad disposition.