I was riding the DC Metro out of Huntington station yesterday and I saw a badger climbing down one of the sloping walls on the side of the station. At least, I think it was a badger. It had a black and white head with small ears, a brown body, and a fluffy brown tail. It was about the size of a domestic cat, but was definitely not a cat - the legs were too short, and its motion would best be described as lumbering, not the quick movement of a cat. My thought when I saw it was ‘badger??’ and after looking at photos of the American Badger, I can confirm that if it was not a badger, it looked exactly like a badger.
Northern VA is definitely not in the normal habitat range for the American Badger. So my question is: WTF was a badger doing in the Metro? Or alternatively, is there an animal that looks exactly identical to the American Badger but is not a badger?
Possibly a woodchuck, which has a similar body shape and gait. These animals are sometimes mistaken for each other. But the woodchuck doesn’t have the head markings.
That’s a thought, too. The badger’s documented range isn’t all that far from the OP (they extend into Ohio), and you can find a few statements that their range has been expanding.
About its body, did it appear fairly low to the ground, almost flat? That’s a fairly striking feature about them when you see one and I’d imagine it allows them to better keep their footing and not get their belly exposed in a fight.
Plus, you’ve got to think about behavior…I’d guess that a skunk would be more likely to be toodling around a Metro station than a badger, but I could be wrong.
It did in fact look very flat, but the only references I can find to ‘wooden badger’ on the Internet are from Monty Python, so I can’t tell if this is a serious post.
I’ll note that it was definitely not a skunk, because the stripe did not continue down the animal’s back. I think a badger that wandered down from Ohio is the most likely story, though it could have been a very dirty raccoon that had lost its ears in a fight.
We badgers are badgASS, man. We go wherever we want to.
Metro, BART, short bus, Paris Métro, monorail… don’t even try to predict where we’ll show up next.
