When Badgers Attack: An Insightful Look at English People

There are three certainties in life: everyone dies, everyone pays taxes, and English people are hilariously proper and quirky. Obviously, I mean this in the best possible way; I love British people. After all, as Hugh Grant said in Love Actually, Great Britain is the country of, “Winston Churchill, Harry Potter… David Beckham’s right foot.” So yeah, they’re pretty much awesome. Anyway, along with the awesomeness, British people tend to be, well, kind of freaking weird. To illustrate my point, I’ll be commenting on pieces of an actual news story I came across on BBC news, titled “Badger Rampage Injures Five.” And no, you are SO not ready for this.

Let’s start of with the lead, shall we? Ahem:

“A rogue badger injured five people during a 48-hour rampage in a quiet suburb.”

Rogue badger? How is that normal than a regular badger?

Oh. That.

And the badger was on a rampage? I don’t know about you guys, but I’m picturing a badger with a baseball bat running around screaming. Because I’m sure that’s not actually what happened, let’s find out what did:

“One man required two skin graft operations, after the badger woke him up and attacked him when he went outside to investigate. Other victims included a man who was attacked as he walked home from a pub, in Evesham, Worcestershire.”

Hold on there, home slice. You’re saying that the badger woke someone up, so they had to go investigate? This is playing into my badger-with-a-baseball-bat theory pretty well. Also, Skin grafts? What the eff did the badger do to this dude? Burn him with its laser beam eyes? I’m interested, let’s find out.

“Pam Fitzgerald said the attack on her husband Michael was like a ‘bizarre horror movie.’ She said: ‘We had gone to bed and we heard a noise in the garage. My husband opened the door and the badger sat there and then, gradually, just slowly walked towards him and attacked him. It caught him on his arm and, in the process of trying to get the badger off himself, he’s lost quite a lot of skin on his arm and some of the flesh.’ Mrs Fitzgerald said the badger also bit her husband’s leg, forcing the couple to flee inside their house.”

Alright, Pam, I know where you’re getting the horror movie thing, because everyone knows that if you’re in a horror movie and you hear a weird noise, you have to go check it out. It’s protocol, duh. And way to go, Pam, you sure picked a winner in this Michael character. I mean, the badger was just sitting there, right? What were you going to do, Michael, have a staring contest with it? Were you just so shocked and amazed at the sight of a real live badger in your garage that you could do nothing  but stare?

I want to know what was going through this guy’s mind when the badger started “slowly walking toward him.” Like, “aw, cute little guy, I’ll just pat him behind the ears.” No. If a badger comes toward you, if ANY animal comes toward you, you back away slowly. Pretty good rule no matter what it is.

Anyway, I like how it takes a badger taking a chunk out of this guy’s arm AND bite his leg to make him run away. What an idiot. So Pam and Michael, our idiot couple of the year, let the badger go free so that it can terrorize the rest of England. Luckily for the Brits, they have Mike Weaver of  The Worcestershire Badger Society (I swear to God I’m not making this up. It’s a real thing.) to capture and kill the badger.

“Mr Weaver said: ‘I was called out on Thursday night. A young man walking home, I presume from the pub, had been bitten by a badger.’ The animal was nowhere to be seen, but early on Friday morning Mr Weaver received a call from police after it was seen chasing people.’The police officer told me it had kept some of their officers at bay and indeed they had to jump on to the bonnet of a car to escape it.’”

Well if that doesn’t conjure up the world’s most hilarious mental image, I don’t know what does. Picture it: a city in distress because of a badger chasing its citizens and marooning cops on top of their squad cars. And kids, I hope this teaches you a valuable lesson: if you drink, badgers will bite you.

Or will they? Do badgers actually have human-attacking tendencies? The answer is no, obviously, otherwise I would have made you a survival guide. Let’s see what Mr. Weaver has to say about the subject:

“‘I have never heard of anything like this in 24 years of work with badgers throughout the UK.’ Mr Weaver said it was extraordinary behaviour for an animal that is usually wary of people. ‘Normal behavior for a badger would be that as soon as it scented humans it would take off.’”

But should we be afraid? Are the badgers going to join up and rebel against us to make one giant leg-biting battalion, forcing us to make signs like this:

Fear the Badgers. Do not disturb their slumber.

According to Mike Weaver, our resident badger expert, no, they aren’t.

“Mr Weaver said there was no need for people to start fearing an onslaught of badger attacks. He said: ‘I’ve been in touch with other people who’ve been involved with badgers and they’ve never heard of anything like it. ‘I would consider this to be a one-off incident and the people of Evesham and Worcestershire, and indeed everywhere else in the country should not be worried that this may happen again.’”

Well that’s good to hear. I sure am glad there isn’t going to be an onslaught of badger attacks. Wouldn’t that be unfortunate? OK, maybe it would just be hilarious, but still.

In conclusion, this is why I love the British. They have awesomely hilarious problems and even more hilarious societies (speaking of which, I plan on seeing what I need to to to become an honorary member of The Worcestershire Badger Society, because that trumps anything anyone else could possibly have on their resume any day of the week).

But most of all, hats off to whomever wrote this article. I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants, so thanks for that.

-Valerie

PS: To read the article of origin, check out http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/hereford/worcs/3023369.stm it’s hilarious, and one of the captions on a badger picture they have literally made me cry I laughed so hard. Enjoy, badger lovers.