My thrill at seeing a badger close to my cabin a couple of weeks ago was renewed Sunday when I saw two. A mother badger (known as a “sow”), along with her cub (sometimes known as a “kit”), was sunning herself on the mound of dirt around their burrow (known as a “sett”).
Adult badgers are similar to raccoons in length and weight but are noticeably shorter. Although badgers excavated a couple of setts in my pasture earlier this spring, the mound seen here is on the adjoining Giacomini family land. I’ve now shown this family to three of my neighbors, all of whom were surprised to learn there were badgers denning nearby.
Badgers live in burrows up to 30 feet long and 10 feet deep, for they are remarkably efficient diggers thanks to long claws and short, strong legs. Although they can run up to 17 or 18 mph for short distances, they generally hunt by digging fast enough to pursue rodents into their burrows.
It is not uncommon for badgers to take over the burrows of prey they’ve eaten, so the overabundance of gophers on this hill could explain all the setts.
Badgers belong to the Mustelidae family, which also includes wolverines, otters, and weasels. Like skunks, which once were considered part of that family, badgers have perineal glands that emit quite a stench. What with the stench, the claws, and extremely strong jaws, adult badgers can hold their own against any potential attackers, including bears and coyotes, although they’d rather hide.
And while coyotes and badgers have been observed fighting over prey, they have also been observed “hunting together in a cooperative fashion,” Wikipedia reports, citing a 1950 article in The Journal of Mammalogy.
Although badgers are hunted in some parts of the United States and the rest of the world, in this state, the California Department of Fish and Game has protected them as a “species of special concern” for more than 30 years.
I’ve see badgers for sale as food in a Guangzhou, China, marketplace. And badgers were once a staple of the Native American, as well as colonial, diet. Even today they’re commonly eaten in France, Russia, and other European countries, as well as China.
Around here, however, the most-common form of badger consumption is as shaving brushes.
The badger’s stiff bristles have long been considered ideal for both shaving and paint brushes. These days most of the hair is imported from China.
“Badgers mate in late summer,” notes the Parks Canada website. “However, the fertilized egg does not implant into the uterus and begin to develop until February. This delayed implantation’ means that breeding can occur in the summer when the adults are most active, and young are born in the spring when food is abundant.
“Two to five furry blind kits are born around April. [ N.B. These dates apply in Canada, and judging from the size of the cub I saw, births may be somewhat earlier in West Marin.] They live off their mother’s milk until August when they strike off to establish their own home range.”
Leaving home is a hair-raising transition for young badgers as they learn how to fend for themselves and not become somebody’s food or shaving brush. Many don’t survive.
In 2007, Marin County supervisors asked Senator Dianne Feinstein (right) to intervene after the Point Reyes National Seashore administration began harassing the oyster company.
The conflict began with an 
The first exposure occurred in July 2008 when the Inspector General’s Office of the Interior Department issued a 
“That really is a policy and law issue,” said Jarvis (right), “not a science issue.”
This legal fact may in the long run be the main obstacle to the Point Reyes National Seashore administration’s machinations to close Drakes Bay Oyster Company three years from now.
In 1974, when the Park Service wrote an environmental-impact statement for the proposal to designate 10,600 acres of the Point Reyes National Seashore as wilderness, the park noted that “control of the [oyster company] lease from the California Department of Fish and Game, with presumed renewal indefinitely, is within the rights reserved by the state on these submerged lands.”
National Seashore Supt. Don Neubacher would like to shut the oyster company down in 2012 when the use permit for its onshore facilities (at right) comes up for renewal, but the onshore facilities are also protected.
The field representative for Congressman John Burton (at left), who sponsored the legislation in the House of Representatives, was the late Jerry Friedman of Point Reyes Station, chairman of the county planning commission and co-founder of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin.
Ratty, as he is called in The Wind in the Willows, showed up on my deck Tuesday to take a drink from the birdbath and eat whatever birdseed he could find.
In Spring a young raccoon’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love, to paraphrase Tennyson.
Even more of a surprise was that they sometimes appeared to be actually making love.
Windstorm destruction. The historic house where Dave Dinsmore lives on Nicasio Square has withstood more than a couple of blows over the years from speeding southbound vehicles. Coming at the end of a long straightaway into town, Nicasio Valley Road’s 90-degree turn in front of the house has sent nighttime speeders flying off the road and into the fence and porch. This week, however, the blow came from a gale that sent half a tree crashing down onto the porch’s roof. No doubt the resilient residence will recover from this blow too.
Reflected in the windows of neighbors Dan and Mary Huntsmans’ potting shed, a cat that could never have perched on their gatepost in this week’s gale could sit there nonchalantly last week.
Here’s a poke at the kind of personal ads that show up locally in The Bay Guardian or on Craigslist.
Just to see if the goofy temperature Google had listed around noon Tuesday was merely a brief aberration, I checked again at 2:22 a.m. Wednesday. By now the air outside had warmed up some, according to Google, but our springtime night was still 12 degrees below freezing. Meanwhile, my own outdoor thermometer showed an air temperature of just over 50 degrees.
By 2 p.m. Wednesday, my thermometer indicated the air outdoors had risen to 60 degrees, so I checked what Google was reporting and this time found Point Reyes Station sounding like a town in the tropics. If I were to believe Google, the temperature here had soared by 113 degrees in 26 hours. What is going on?
Addendum: By Friday, Google was reporting that in Point Reyes Station’s zip code, current temperature “information is temporarily unavailable.” I’d like to think that this blog had something to do with that, but I doubt it.
Closely following Friday’s discussion are oyster company owners Kevin and Nancy Lunny.
The “most common industries for males” working in West Marin, City-Data.com says, are: “construction, 17 percent; professional, scientific, and technical services, 10 percent; agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, 10 percent; educational services, 8 percent; accommodation and food services, 7 percent; health care, 5 percent; arts, entertainment, and recreation, 5 percent.”
The Miwok Indian cemetery at Reynolds (where Tony’s Seafood is located; the restaurant’s white buildings can be seen in the background) From 1875 to 1930, Reynolds was a whistlestop on the narrow-gauge railroad, and numerous Miwoks lived nearby. A few of their descendants still do. The cemetery belongs to the Miwok Rancheria in Graton, Sonoma County.
Today, of course, is the first day of Spring, and wildflowers have begun blooming around the plastic flowers that decorate each cross.
“The heart of the group’s activity, listed cryptically on its Web site’s calendar as ‘morning practice,’ is closed to all but the residents. At 7 a.m. each day,” The Times reports, “about a dozen women, naked from the waist down, lie with eyes closed in a velvet-curtained room, while clothed men huddle over them, stroking them in a ritual known as orgasmic meditation,” ‘OMing,’ for short.
A warning sign of Spring: Hundreds of people showed up at the Dance Palace this afternoon for Sacred Heart Church’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Barbecue.
A volunteer bartender at the St. Patrick’s Day Barbecue, Mark Allen (left) of Inverness Park, takes an order for an Irish coffee.
Another warning sign of Spring: The gloomy days of winter are supposed to be over “when the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobin’ along.” But at Jay’s home this year, the first robin of Spring is not “red, red” but partially albino. (Photo by Jay Haas)