After a busy morning of computer work, the other day I went for a walk in the afternoon with livestock guard dogs Rena and Rant, and herding dog Abe. It was about 40 degrees and we went up on the Mesa, watching the two bald eagles sitting on our fenceposts behind the house. There are prairie dogs out and chattering, bothering the dogs. Abe and Rena chased a jackrabbit. I could hear a bluebird singing. A couple of young pronghorn bucks were playing, shoving each other back and forth.
As I walked, I was getting ready to step over a burrow in the ground, and I suddenly heard this deep-throated growl that sounds like what I imagine a grizzly bear would sound like, but it was coming from a hole in the ground. I screamed and sprinted away, but within about three steps started laughing out loud as I realized I had heard myself scream, and indeed “I scream like a girl.” Of course it was a badger not happy to have me walking atop its hole. Actually Rena had just snooped around the hole, so the growl was probably meant for her.
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A few years ago I was checking out some an area in southern Colorado for elk hunting potential when, looking out my truck window at a small rocky meadow, I saw something scurrying around close to the ground. The binos showed it to be a badger (my first and so far only). The wind was good so I was able to walk up to about twenty yards away and watch him zooming around the meadow, presumably searching for mice or grasshoppers or some such. Suddenly he stopped and flattened out while facing away and a coyote showed up on the edge of the meadow. They faced off for a minute or two while I was thinking "just like Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom!" before the coyote turned off (must have been young and dumb, my truck was parked sixty yards away in plain sight) and the badger disappeared under a rock.
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