Red Badge of Courage

The first time I caught a badger, I thought the Russians had dropped a bomb on my set.  Then I saw the badger in the trap.  But soon I caught a couple more of them and I realized that it's about the same thing.  My friend Jimmy Hill trapped with me some while I was in high school.  Now Jim caught a badger one day and clobbered it good with a broken hickory shovel handle.  The badger moved, so he clobbered it a couple more times.  Convinced it was finally dead, we then put it in a gunnysack, Jim tossed it over his shoulder and we headed for home.  'Bout halfway, the badger decided he didn't like the confinement of a gunnysack.  The easiest way out was through the side of the sack, which would have been fine had Jim's back not been in the way.  Now, if you've never seen a badger's front claws, you are in for a surprise.  Not quite the same surprise that Jim was in for, though, because feeling those claws tear through your shirt gives you a much better appreciation for those claws than just looking at them.  The furor of an angry badger makes the Tasmanian Devil look like a downy chick.  By some miracle, we managed to get the badger subdued for good.  Jim of course, smeared the blood from his back around real well for effect before we headed back to tell our friends of our heroic acts in the face of grave danger.  Jim was a wrestler.  Wrestlers are like that.

Not only are badgers ferocious, but they are downright ornery.  And they can practically turn around inside their skin.  Their skin fits so loose that if it is grabbed by a coyote or anything else stupid enough to try to catch one, the badger can spin around and bite back no matter where it is held.  A couple years ago, I saw a large badger started to cross the gravel road near my home.  When it saw me coming in a minivan, this ornery cuss turned, bared its teeth and came at the van.  His arrogance has earned him a permanent place on my wall.

Bernie Barringer, Bernie Barringer's Complete Guide to Farmland Fur Trapping (Crystal Lake: Moving Mountain Publishing 1997), 289-290.

Too Much Powder

Tow Ball Recovery

Had a regular stop by and talk about how using a tow ball to recover a vehicle resulted in someone's death.  This was not recent, but thought I would bring this up because it is a terrible idea and it could happen to anyone.  I mean, hey, you can hook up a heavy trailer to a ball, right?  To get an idea of just how deadly this is, watch this.  It is graphic, as the cameraman apparently felt the need to run up to the unfortunate guys and stare at their faces.  One thing you will notice in this video and the ones that are amusing instead of tragic, is that the driver will just speed up with a slack strap instead of easing out, because he does not think he can recover the vehicle without picking up speed first.  Vehicle recovery can be dangerous, and if you do not know how to do it, deadly.  The regular talking to me about this still recovered vehicles after that incident and was describing how he would duck down and use his hand to accelerate...