

BADGERS AND THEIR WAYS 



quite tame and greatly attached to her master. At first 

 it seemed hopeless to try and tame her; "when she 

 was not rolled up in a touch-me-not sort of ball, she 

 was snapping and biting at everything. There was 

 nothing for it but to tackle her in a determined way, 

 and this I did," says Mr. Lort, " by getting hold of her 

 by the scruff of the neck not by any means an easy 

 thing to do, for she could so raise the muscles of her 

 neck that her skin became perfectly tight and rigid. 

 . . . The taming of Sally was not accomplished 

 without painful proof of the strength of the badger's 

 jaw. An i8-lb. badger hanging to the ends of 

 one's fingers a time or two is, to say the least of it, 

 calculated to make a serious impression. Those who 

 have had their digits shut in a door will best realise the 

 sensation." The jaws of a badger form, as a matter of 

 fact, the strongest part of its anatomy. Not only are 

 they armed with thirty-eight teeth although usually, 

 owing to the shedding of the first premolars at an early 

 age, thirty-four teeth are only present but the lower 

 jaw is so strongly articulated to the skull that it cannot 

 be separated without fracture. The sharp, strong teeth 

 are so placed in the jaw that they lock together with 

 the closeness and tenacity of a vice. Once the badger 

 gets its grip firmly fixed, it is a hard matter indeed to 

 make it relax that terrible hold ; and in the old days of 

 baiting, many a terrier lost one of its jaws, clean torn 

 away by its persecuted and relentless adversary. It is 

 small wonder, indeed, that the badger is so formidable 

 a foe to dogs and other adversaries. 



Mr. Lort occasionally took Sally on slugging expedi- 

 tions into fields of long aftermath. In these she 

 delighted; "and now," says her owner, "when I see 

 in the early morning a track all over the grass fields 

 like that which a broom would leave upon the dew, I 



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