Behind the Badge
How do you know?
District Game Warden Courtney Sprenger
I was a new warden stationed in Bismarck when I received a call about a badger in a flower garden.
Badgers can be a bit tricky to handle, so game warden Jackie Lundstrom and I responded to the home, located in a nice neighborhood near the edge of town.
The homeowner directed us around the house to an expansive, beautifully manicured back yard.
Standing safely on the deck, he pointed to where he had seen the badger in the middle of a gorgeous bed of tall flowers, all in bloom. Having grown up on a farm, I was familiar with the damage a badger can do in a garden and the aggressiveness with which they are known to defend their territory.
Warden Lundstrom and I approached the flower garden cautiously while the homeowner watched from the deck.
Seeing no damage and no badger, we peered amongst the flowers that the homeowner had indicated concealed the badger.
Seeing nothing, we began cautiously moving aside the flowers to look more closely, finally locating the furry critter.
A small pair of eyes ringed with black circles peered out at me from beneath the flowers.
Instead of an aggressive badger, angry at being disturbed from his nap, I was staring at a small, frightened young raccoon.
Relieved, warden Lundstrom and I informed the homeowner that he had a racoon in his yard, not a badger.
His response left me speechless.
“How do you know?”
It took me a moment to realize he was asking how I knew that the animal in the flowers was a raccoon, not a badger, and I was at a loss as to how I should answer.
I had no memory of learning how to tell a raccoon from a badger; it was just something I knew, but I finally mumbled something about rings and stripes.
My fumbling response probably led to the next question, “Are you sure?”
Although warden Lundstrom and I were quite sure of our species identification, we returned to the flower bed for another look, using the opportunity to confirm that there was definitely only one baby raccoon.
We quickly conferred over what we should tell the homeowner and decided we shouldn’t alarm him more by mentioning the possibility that there was also a mother raccoon in the neighborhood.
We informed him that the animal was definitely a raccoon and that it was probably harmless.
We recommended he keep his garage doors closed and not put any pet food outside that evening and assured him the raccoon would likely leave on its own after dark.