Author Robert Ruark described the HB thus: “It kills for malice and for sport and it does not go for the jugular – it goes straight for the groin.” According to one famous old story, a badger will bring down animals as large as buffaloes by biting them in the genitals until they bleed to death.
As I wrote in my diary the night before we brought the baby Badger home: “What little sleep I had that night was punctuated by nightmares. Our poor old Nandi dog torn to ribbons in her own house, the bushbuck flying through the fence with a salivating badger on their tails – and, worst of all, my husband and son leaving home to joining the Drakensberg Boys’ Choir. I’ve really done it this time.”
We were regaled with horror stories by our friends and the staff at Stone Hills. Honey badgers rumbling in to steal the barbequed steaks from under the noses of a bunch of terrified picnickers. And the badger who attacked the back wheel of a car in the Kruger National Park. When the growling finally stopped, the couple took off at high speed, stopping only when they reached a picnic spot a good few kilometers further down the road. But when the driver’s wife went to open the boot, she met an enraged badger, covered with dust, who had been bumping along behind them, his teeth locked onto the rubber flap over one back wheel.
‘Did you know that honey badgers can count?’ Scout Richard Mabhena asked me one day.
I said that I didn’t know but I wasn’t at all surprised.
‘If you watch while he is raiding a beehive,’ he went on, ‘you will see that he takes the combs and keeps hiding them close by. When the pile gets big enough, you can go in quietly and steal a couple; but you can only do this twice before you must run away. Mantswane will soon ask himself: why is this pile not getting any bigger? And he will count the combs and know that you have been stealing. If he finds your tracks, beware! He’ll catch up with you wherever you are!’
‘And then what happens, Mabhena?’ I asked.
‘There’s war!’
Is this the truth? Well, let’s say partially. Badgers may be affected by rabies and this could account for some of very uncharacteristic behaviour. Stealing steaks off the barbeque? Certainly. A badger’s determination to get his own way can be compared with that of a two year old in a sweet shop.
But “treacherous”, “attacks without provocation” and similar descriptions from the reference books? Absolute nonsense.
We know better than that!
Tomorrow THE TRUE BADGER
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