There appears to be a convergence of the sports zealots, the political zealots, and the New Years resolution zealots this week on Farcebook. I haven't seen this much drama and collateral damage since the time we locked the badger in widow Thompson's outhouse. It's a cautionary tale worth remembering.
We had caught the animal under a bucket down by the creek and decided it would be best if we could relocate it to a safe place while we were fishing. Unbeknownst to us the quilting bee was meeting at widow Thompson's place that week and we had just closed the door on the outhouse when suddenly the pastor's wife came charging out the back door of the main house intent on answering nature's insistent call. Shoving us aside she raced into the little shack, banged the door closed and slapped the lock before we could say anything to her about the current occupant. Roused by the noise and offended by the intrusion, the badger came up out of the hole just as she was descending and expressed his desire she wait her turn. She replied in a most unladylike way and clawed through the door with her four inch acrylic nails in less time than a chainsaw goes through plywood.
Hitting the back door of the house at full steam, with the badger still attached, she tore into the middle of the quilting bee shouting and gesticulating wildly. The other women, apparently believing this was the great awakening that the pastor had recently prophesied, jumped up to start shouting, praying, and dancing around too.
The poor badger was now looking for a way, any way, out of the place and proceeded to start making laps around the room. We, not wanting him to escape and go back down to the fishing hole, blocked the door until we could formulate a plan to recapture the beast before he got out or came to serious harm.
The poor thing never stood a chance. Widow Willson kept a 12 gauge shotgun behind the front door and on the eleventh lap, from a distance of about four feet, she hit him with both barrels. He disintegrated in a rapidly expanding cloud of fur, teeth, and other badger parts that quickly enveloped everything and everyone in the room. What had begun as an impromptu revival turned into something altogether different. The women, now deafened by the blast and covered in various bits of badger, began screaming like a flock of witches calling up an unholy demon from the depths of hell itself. The sheriff's wife spotted us peaking though the window at the carnage and they all came at us at once.
We headed for the hills with them clearing fences, fallen logs, and the odd gulch right behind us. Eventually we lost them when Fatty Tommy Johansen fell behind and they set upon him. He thrashed about wildly, but only lasted twenty or thirty seconds before he was hoisted on high by his hair, both ears, and his belt. The mob of harppies carried him back to the house for summary judgment while his cries faded in our ears. It was a terrible sacrifice, but it provided enough time for the rest of us to break away and scatter to the four winds.
We never saw Fatty again after that. Our teacher told us his family had moved to Ryrie, but we suspected he had not survived to make the trip with them. The game warden confiscated the shotgun and the quilt the women had been sewing as evidence, the quilt being the object with the largest amount of the badger attached to it. The pastor and his wife were soon transferred to another church with softer chairs so she could recuperate more easily.
We learned our lesson though. We had missed out on our day of fishing and we all resolved that, no matter what, we would never let other people's drama do that to us again.
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