Tender Moment

The American badger has earned a reputation for fierceness. A member of the Mustelid Family, its cousins are pine martens, otters, and wolverines. Built like an earthmover and armed with inch-long sharp claws and strong canine teeth, badgers are a formidable foe. Their shaggy, loose fur allows them to twist free of predators and they are also capable of backward digging, which allows them to disappear into the ground all while confronting the threat head-on in a frightening display of menacing claws, fangs, and snarls.
 
Short, stout, and built for digging, the badger can break ground with the front claws and fling it away with the rear ones in a continuous and extremely efficient manner. In late summer, after breeding, the female badger digs a den, called a sett. This long underground burrow contains numerous rooms, including one used as a bathroom. Implantation and active gestation do not occur until February, and 1-5 pups are born in March or April. The young stay with mom until late fall.
 
This photograph was taken in early June as two pups wrestled and rolled with each other. They were relentless, climbing all over mom, who was trying to rest. They shot in and out of the burrow, forward, backward, romping around the sett looking to cause mischief. Here, I caught one of the pups coming out of the burrow for about the tenth time in an hour trying its best to get mom’s attention. Her patience and mine was rewarded with this tender kiss from her pup.