12: Badger

Hi friends,

I write to you from Arapahoe, Ute, and Cheyenne land. I am interested in learning about the different animals that live in the place where I was born. I want to mention that biological classification as taught by western science has its roots in racism, sexism, and transphobia – here’s a good explainer about why.

There are twelve mammals in Colorado whose name starts with B, including some of our most famous animals. However, we’re going to start with one that I have never even seen in North America – the badger, which in Colorado is the American badger (Taxidea taxus). They are, however, apparently not all that rare here, based on this news story. I saw them several times while I lived in the UK, usually trundling around shortly after dusk, raiding a rubbish bin.

Badgers are fossorial, from the Latin fossor, meaning “digger”. I have now desperately searched the entire internet for a clip from Jurassic Park of the guy mining amber in Costa Rica saying, “Grant’s like me. He’s a digger” with no luck. Badgers hunt by digging out their prey with their eyes protected by a special eyelid – hunting by scent – uprooting voles, gophers, ground squirrels, and any other small, burrowing mammal. They also sometimes hunt with a coyote friend, using their complementary styles of getting prey to increase both of their success rates.

Badgers live in a remarkable spread of ecosystems – documented from the deserts of Arizona to 12,000 feet alpine environments in Colorado and everywhere in between, inhabiting most of southern Canada and all of the United States except the southeast. They served as a food and fur source for many Native/First Nations groups as well as colonial settlers and the Blackfeet sometimes used the word “badger” as a stand-in for the word “grizzly bear” out of respect for the latter’s chaotic energy.

Tomorrow we return to the world of the replies.