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Badgers and Mash
Submitted by An Outdoor Idiots Team Member.
Introduction
Don't worry, in spite of the title, we aren't going to suggest making badgers into sausages. There may be only one letter separating a badger from a banger, but there is also the small matter of the Protection of Badgers Act 1992. That, and they probably wouldn't taste very good anyway.As part of a larger article that we intend to publish at some point in the future, definitely, maybe, we wanted to ask the burning question:
Do badgers love mashed potatoes?
And we weren't just going to idly ask the question. We were going to take a bowl of mashed potatoes into the woods, and see how it fared in a badger taste-testing session. But whatever the outcome, we wouldn't expect you to just take our word for it. That's why we were going to go armed with a clever darkness-defying video camera to capture the evidence.
That plan has now fallen through, since the rightful owner of the clever camera has taken it back, correctly surmising that the longer it was in our hands, the more likely it would become damaged in an idiotic and entirely avoidable accident.
We therefore trawled the Internet to see if the test has been done before. We could see no sign of it, but we did find this marvellous site. On one page, there are videos of badgers eating all manner of foods. We knew at once that we had found the people in the know when it comes to badger diet.
So we put the mashed potato question to them in an email, and even plucked up the bare-faced cheek to ask them if they could provide video evidence. In a true example of how the Internet can be a good place to live, this is the sporting answer we got:
Hello, Outdoor Team,
In the past, I have found that badgers are not too keen on straight mashed potatoes but if I add butter and milk, they may be tempted.
I will prepare some potato and put it in the bowl one evening. I'll email you to let you know when, so that you can watch the badgercam which is on every evening from about 9.00pm till 10.00pm.
I'll even put a big label on the food bowl to say that it is straight mashed potato. Then another day, I'll put some with added butter and milk. We shall all learn how discerning their palates are ;-)
By the way, the answer is 13. That's an easy one that even my 11 year olds would have known ;-)
Cheers,
Dave
Why?
There are two reasons why we need to know the answer to this question. Here they are:
Yes, that's right, it's Bodger and Badger. For years, this pair, during the song that introduced their television programme, indoctrinated the nation with the line:
"Everybody knows, Badger loves mashed potatoes..."
Well, at Outdoor Idiots.com we take nobody's word for anything. After all, the song continues, "He makes them into shapes and eats them everyday!". It's all a bit hard to swallow, if you ask us. We intend to get to the bottom of the matter once and for all.
When?
Two tests took place, one on Thursday 24th May 2007 and the other on Friday 25th May 2007. Both were carried out between approximately 9pm and 10pm.Where?
In case you missed it, badgercam is here. It was experiencing some technical difficulties at the time. If you get a flickering image but the timestamp in the image does not update, then you might try closing and reopening your browser in order to view the latest image - this seemed to work for us, a lot of the time.The Tests
The two tests and their outcomes will now be covered. In addition to the webcam evidence, we have also been treated to some high-tech, high-quality motion-picture footage of the event.Since we don't know anything about animals at Outdoor Idiots.com, we thought we'd call upon the services of the late Johnny Morris, God rest his soul, to help us out.
Well, boo to Auntie Beeb! Johnny had it right and they were just plain wrong. But then they obviously knew that, because just a few years later, in a stunning U-turn, they started screening a programme with a talking badger. And it had title lyrics which suggested things about badgers which they had failed to properly verify. That's why we are in this whole mess now. So we're not listening to the BBC any more. Anthroponorp - ehm, anthromor - ehm, anthropodi - errr...
[The Editor speaks: "Anthropomorphism. Next."]
Yes, that. It's the way forward.
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