The Daily Procrastinator

A few days ago, if you had said “badgers” to me, this would come to mind.

My read of that video is that badgers are afraid of snakes (and maybe mushrooms). I am intensely afraid of snakes. If I see a picture of a snake, chances are I will have a snake nightmare that night. So, the other day when I was reading the internet and read that in a video I could watch a honey badger have a (successful) tussle with a puff adder, I was confused and anxious.

Why would a badger fight a snake?

And how could the badger… win?

So, I investigated the honey badger. I began where I always begin research: Google Images and Wikipedia. (That is also usually where I end research, unless Internet Movie Database gets in the mix somehow.) The images revealed a decidedly squat, somewhat flat-headed animal. I could see why such an animal would have a bad attitude: while its name is cute, it is not. Some of the pictures made the animal look a little freaky (like the one where it was eating a snake), but generally, it looked kind of like if a skunk and a dog had a baby. Plus maybe a little bit of hedgehog. And/or seal. But whoa, Wikipedia. First off, honey badgers live in Africa, Iraq, and Pakistan. If that won’t make you tough, I don’t know what will. Next, they are described as “fierce carnivores.” However, they do love to eat honey. And beehives. While the bees are stinging them.  And occasionally die that way. Despite this, they are smart enough to use tools. And thanks to the “favorable claw to body ratio” they are considered the world’s “most fearsome land animal.” Their ferocity plus their “thick, loose skin” means that even lions leave them be since a lion can’t grip a honey badger tightly enough to dispatch it.

What Teresa Saw.

At this point, I felt like I had to see this animal in action. So I watched the youtube video. You watch it too, now. Start around 2:30 to see honey badger vs. puff adder. Start around 2:30 to be completely befuddled and have your perceptions of what is a scary beast rearranged.

See? See?

So I can’t decide whether I am a fan or afraid of honey badgers. They kill and eat snakes, which certainly gets them a plus in my book. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? But… they kill and eat snakes, even after being bitten and paralyzed by said snakes, which means… maybe they are worse than snakes. But then if you watch the video more, a baby honey badger tries to take a nap while his mom digs a hole and throws the dirt on him. That’s cute.

So what better to do than to adopt the term honey badger in a cute/freaky way. From now on I shall refer to girls who are cute but completely weird/psycho as “honey badgers.” So something along these lines:

CONSTANCE: So, have you met Herbert’s new girlfriend?

JEANETTE: Yes. She is pretty cute.

CONSTANCE: True, but I think she might be a bit of a honey badger. She wouldn’t let Herbert eat any red meat when they went on a date last week, and thinks he’s going to sell his action figure collection to buy her an engagement ring.

JEANETTE: That’s a shame.