Badger's Bad Afternoon

I recently wrote what I felt was a humorous story about Artoo chasing the cats. I still get a chuckle from the memory of Little Brown batting him on the head every time he jumped up at her while she sat on the ex-pen. Both were having a grand old time, knowing that neither had designs to hurt the other. Anyone who has read that story knows that I would never allow any animal to threaten or harm another one, as long as I could see the potential for damage. That's why Badger is in one of two covered ex-pens during his outside excursions, unless he is on leash or in the training ring. Unlike Artoo, who is allowed free roam of the grounds even when I'm not outside, Badger cannot be trusted.

Unfortunately, in our humid Deep South climate, metal objects rust or decay quickly. For that reason, I generally do ex-pen repairs with zip ties. They don't rust and are quickly replaced when they get brittle. I don't have a regular ex-pen maintenance schedule, although I may be implementing one when I revise my set-up in the spring. Anyway, having secured the roof of Badger's ex-pen and having tied the door shut as well as latched it, I was lulled into a false sense of security. I should have known better. With terriers--any kind of terrier--any belief that they are unable to create mischief is a false sense of security.

I had been busy with the garden that morning and moving Cowboy and all of the little things that I do when I'm not cutting deer meat off the bone. I was relaxing with my German lesson (on Duolingo) during my afternoon downtime when I heard the dogs in the ex-pens cutting up a fuss. By now, my readers must know that the dogs love to bark at the world, if they think that anything is out of place. For a few minutes, it seemed as if the barking was just the everyday barking that I hear all the time and tend to tune out. Then, I heard the chickens. They were LOUD and making sounds unlike their "Artoo is buzzing us, so we will cluck" sounds. Rooster Roo was having a fit and sending his hens to safety.

Naturally, I rushed out the door and onto the porch. Two my left, beyond Steele's pen and Widget's covered pen, I could see Badger, his paws on Rooster Roo's back, his mouth full of down and sickle feathers. Artoo and Cyi were milling around, cheering him on. No hen was anywhere to be seen. His purpose fulfilled, Rooster Roo let out one last exhausted crow and fell to the ground, wings outspread and laid there, inert.

"Badger! NO sir!" I yelled as I descended the porch steps. "You BAD DOG! You killed my rooster!"

Artoo and Cyi, recognizing that I was on a tear, danced out of reach but stuck around to watch. If there's anything that terriers like as much as making mischief, it's watching fellow miscreants get into trouble. All of the dogs were watching from their pens, enjoying the show. Badger, having gone through all that trouble to get his rooster, didn't want to be separated from it. He growled at me as I reached down for him but, as is normally the case when Badger tries to bluff me, he didn't protest when I brought him inside and returned him to his crate. Cyi and Artoo followed me back inside. Now that the rooster was still, they had no further interest in it.

With Artoo, Badger, and Cyi safely inside, all I had to do was dispose of the deceased Rooster Roo. I've been homesteading for a while and tend not to get attached to the quail or to the hens, but I love my roosters. I have to admit, I was in tears as I walked over to my roo, splayed in the dirt. I touched his legs, planning to place him into the bin on top of Widgets ex-pen until I could bury him later. I immediately jumped back as Rooster Roo leapt to his feet, battered but unbowed, running into the tall grass in search of his hens. Say what you will about roosters being mean, but a good rooster is worth twenty times his weight in gold. I later found out, by following the feather trail, that Rooster Roo had led Badger away from a hen who had made a nest in the grass and was brooding a clutch of eggs. Hen and eggs would have been lost, I'm certain, had Badger happened upon the nest.

Eventually, everything was set right. The hens returned from their hiding places to feast on spilled goat pellets at feeding time. Rooster Roo emerged from the tall grass by nightfall and, over the next few days, he regained his (four o'clock in the morning!) mighty crow. I removed the hen's eggs from the nest and placed them in the incubator, where any chicks that might hatch have a 1000% better chance of survival than they would if they hatched being surrounded by five cats and a yard full of terriers.

Why Do You Keep Badger?

I get it. It's the elephant in the room. Badger can't be trusted around kittens or quail or chickens. If the adult cats and goats didn't outweigh him, he couldn't be trusted around them, either. I've seen him chase cats with murder on his mind, so I have no doubt as to their fate if he caught them. Badger is a small, fast-moving, terrier-shaped, stone-cold killer. I get it. In his day, he caught many a rodent that invaded my feed storage areas. It's not his fault that, at some point, his prey drive got stuck in overdrive. Any unintended deaths that he's caused have come back to my carelessness. I knew that the cats were on the porch and that he was out of his crate when I opened the door. The kitten would not have died had it not rushed inside, right into his grasp. My fault, my carelessness. The several quail he killed would not have died had I not accidentally let them escape their cage. My fault. In this situation, I failed to check the sides of his pen over time. My carelessness allowed him to find a rusty hinge and push it open, which he did with Cyi in tow.

Is Badger entirely blameless? Of course not. He's spent his life living up to the first three letters of his name. If there's mischief being made, he's usually the ringleader or the first of the hangers-on. He seeks out trouble like he's a magnet and "trouble" is iron filings. In large part, however, that's genetics at work. You can't expect to keep a creature that was bred for vermin control and expect it to love your other critters. His major problem is simply that he's very good at what he does.

No matter what he does, God and Badger's health willing, he is going to be with me for at least a few more years. He's nine years old now and, soon, he's going to slow down despite himself. He's been a good dog for me. We've gotten AKC Rally titles, UKC conformation, Rally, and traditional obedience titles--even a Trick Dog title. He's won Total Dog at a UKC event, and he was the first TFT ever (to my knowledge) to compete at the Total Dog Invitational. His wins there earned him the title of "National Total Dog." Despite his baser nature, he's a good companion and a great couch snuggler.

Yeah. I think I'll keep him.