BADGERS AND THEIR WAYS 



as the champion digger of the animal kingdom, having 

 been witness of some of his exploits ; but the badger 

 takes a very high place in the art of getting under 

 ground. A captive badger, unless very carefully 

 looked after, will make its escape from what seem 

 impossible situations. The sportsman -naturalist St. 

 John one day found a badger in a trap, not much 

 injured. Tying a rope to its hind leg, he drove the 

 animal home, strange to say, the captive beast jogging 

 steadily along in front of him, and giving little more 

 trouble than a pig going to market. On reaching 

 home the animal was put for the night into a paved 

 court, where it seemed perfectly secure. " Next morn- 

 ing," says St. John, " he was gone, having displaced 

 a stone that I thought him quite incapable of moving, 

 and then, digging under the wall, he got away." 



The badger will not only locate with extraordinary 

 acumen, but will dig up with immense quickness, 

 moles in their earths. It is probable that the animal 

 obtains some fair proportion of his flesh diet from 

 this source ; he has, however, many little plans for 

 achieving the luxuries that he fancies at various 

 seasons : he will, for example, make his way to a 

 rookery in springtime and pick up and devour young 

 rooks that have fallen, as they often will do, out of 

 the nest. Once having fixed upon the site of its earth, 

 the badger excavates with astonishing rapidity. In 

 this operation it does not, however, have recourse to 

 the plan vouched for by our friend Nicholas Cox, 

 author of the Gentleman 's Recreation, who, writing 

 in 1677, makes the following extraordinary statement : 

 "Badgers, when they earth, after by digging they 

 have entered a good depth, for the clearing of the 

 Earth out, one of them falleth on the Back and the 

 other layeth Earth on the Belly, and so taking his. 



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