The call came within minutes of noon.

Dispatch. She sounds almost reluctant to relay her request. Seems she's already talked to one of my wardens, and he let her know I was trying to have at least one day off in September. But I'm clearly the closest to this situation.

"Would I like to help S-1 with a badger in a backyard?"

Yes!

Okay, so maybe I said it with too much enthusiasm. But, contrary to my stated plans, I'd spent the morning working on our sage grouse database. A trip out of the house would be welcome.

Besides, I love badgers. They're such sweethearts.

"You're so funny..." the dispatcher responds to my excitement. I ask exactly where the badger is.

"105 N 19th street."

Ummmm, that can't be right. Our town is small. Only goes to 11th street.

But never mind. I'll contact S-1 (the chief of police) and he'll let me know where I need to go.

So, ten minutes later or so finds me parked in a driveway behind the chief's fancy SUV. I ask what the badger's mood is.

"Well, he's settled down quite a bit, now. Was pretty upset when their dog found it." The dog is inside now, as well as the neighbor's kids.

Ferocious badger loose in town, you know.

Chief had claimed this was a big one, but when I peek into the narrow less-than-one-meter-wide space between two garages, I see a young badger glaring back at me. No, not a big one. Chief seems surprised all I brought with me was my noose pole and a 55-gallon drum (previously used to collect deer heads for CWD sampling).

We block off the street side of the badger's space with a piece of plywood stolen from the neighbor's trash cans. Chief props it up against the two garages with his foot, and leans back. As I circle around the garage towards the back, I mention...

By the way. He can probably scramble over that board if he really wants to.

Just so you know...

I duck through the hedge that blocks the back of the garage space, and feel the chief's eyes widen as I stroll in towards the fierce little beasty. Who plays his roll to the hilt, making a mad, low growling charge towards my feet.

Whoa!

We'll have none of that. I block his charge with my noose, and before the badger realizes what he's run into, Bob's your uncle and I've got a badger caught at the end of my pole. Keeping the leash tight, I walk my badger captive down into the driveway, guide him into the barrel, which the chief promptly tips upright.

'Poof'!, we've caught a badger. Probably less than five minutes from start to finish.

The little thing looks so cute,

and I just want to run my fingers through that fur

But I guess not.

As I head north on 9th, I call dispatch, and let her know...

I've got a badger in the back of my truck right now. Once I find a prairie dog town and let him go, I'll be 10-24 with this one.

And into the desert we go. For a release site, I'm looking for three things. First, we gotta get several miles from town. Second, it's got to be public land. Badgers have an ill reputation with almost all ranchers, solely because they dig holes. So you never kick out a badger on someone's private ground. The public's hole digger needs to be let go on publicly owned land. And thirdly, there need to be prairie dogs close by.

I've got the perfect spot in mind, but a tourist is parked there. As I pass by, thinking of a contingency site, I notice a pronghorn doe standing close to the road.

With a buck in close attendance.

We're in the peak of the rut, so I don't have to wait long...

Which will probably be another entry some time. But as I voyeuristically watch their coupling, I see the tourist pull out and drive away. So, once the doe leads her buck off for a little privacy, I turn back to release my badger at the highway fence by the prairie dog town.

Problem is, he doesn't want to go. That big round steel barrel is the safest cover around, and the badger refuses to move away.

I circle to the other side, and am sorely tempted by the sight of an unprotected badger butt.

But before I can lean in to count coup, I'm facing hissing teeth again.

Oookay, we can fix this.

I take the barrel back to the truck. Only to have the badger try to follow.

This is bad. While traffic is light, or almost non-existant, this is a full speed paved highway here. We do not want the badger wandering around on the right-of-way. So I charge the badger, halting his chase after his new blue and yellow shelter.

And suddenly I see the youngster that this is. Those of you who can read expression points probably know exactly what was going through that young badger's mind at that moment...

"I wish my Mom was here..."

My attempts to harrass the badger back under the fence are futile, but I get to see the poor thing go through probably every threatening posture that his instincts and mother taught him:

About this time, an SUV comes down the highway. And backs up and parks. The driver comes over, camera in hand, and the badger suddenly realizes it is outnumbered.

Ha! Got you two to one, now! We win.

Or so I thought. Apparently, the natural instinctive response for a badger when attacked by vastly superior forces on two sides is to...

Attack back.

If his timing is any good at all, I suspect the driver has a wonderful picture of me suspended in the air, with my feet somehow a meter or two behind the rest of my body.

And then we're at a standoff.

I'm holding my ground, but the badger isn't backing an inch further off the highway, either.

Time for a new strategy. I turn around and fumble in the bed of the truck for a shovel.

And hear a laugh behind my back. "That did it! He's gone!"

And I turn just in time to see a badger butt vaulting over sagebrush and out of sight.

If I'd have known all I had to do was turn around, I would have done that a long time ago....

As I head back to town, the dispatcher asks me a question... "Why release the badger in a prairie dog town?"

"Do you hate prairie dogs?"

Well, no, but I admit it is sorta like letting Godzilla loose in a city...

But that's what badgers eat.