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Show ~2- "Are they puppies?" Little Brother (Twirp) squeeked in happy anticipation. Mother went about her preparations for breakfast as if this was nothing unusual. But she was listening to our speculations and with a smile she finally told us, "They are baby badgers." Badgers! Where did they come from? Who brought them? Why? "I was as surprised as you were," Mother told us. "Dad and I found them in the box when we got up early this morning to stoke the fire. Dad knew they were badgers but I didn't." Mother told us the rest of the story. She and Dad greeted our two teen-aged brothers with the same questions earlier when they got out of bed to milk the cows. The boys plopped their cold shoes into the open oven to warm them, propped their feet on the oven door and related their experience. It seemed that our brothers had gotten the grandiose idea of going into badger breeding as a money-making project. They reasoned that since Dad was in the Silver Fox business, the addition of badgers would present no problem; the formula used for the foxes would do for badger food as well. And there were empty pens to put them in. So without consulting Dad, they and a friend, who claimed to know all about capturing badgers, took off for the prairies not too far distant from home. They planned to stay in an old cabin until they had captured several badgers, enough to launch their enterprise. Not until the third day did the boys even find a mound of dirt indicating a badger hole. Armed with shovels they dug furiously. The hole was headed east with a downward slant and then suddenly reversed directions to the west. At this point |
