SCIENTIFIC NAME

Taxidea taxus

DISCRIPTION/APPEARANCE

Flattish body, wider than high, with short, bowed legs. Shaggy coat grizzled gray to brown. Short, bushy, yellowish tail. White cheeks; narrow white stripe runs from above nose over head to nape.

BADGER DISTRIBUTION

Range of the North American badger

Taxidea taxus, indicating its four subspecies in the USA and Canada, 1998. Subspecies range limits corrected based on recent literature and surveys completed by provincial and state wildlife agency personnel or other local experts. Range of T. t. jacksoni may extend from Minnesota into northwestern Ontario, either as extralimital forays or possibly as small resident population. Existence ofT. t. jacksoni in southeast Manitoba is highly questionable; badgers in that area are more likely to be T. t. taxus. Lines were smoothed where range limits drawn by respondents did not match across jurisdictional boundaries (adapted from Newhouse and Kinley, in prep.).

Badger attack 'like a horror movie'

The wife of a man who was savaged by a badger outside their home said he would be permanently scarred by the ordeal.

Pam Fitzgerald said the attack on her husband Michael, 67, at the front door of their house in Evesham, Worcestershire, was "like something out of a horror movie".
The animal injured four other people during a 48-hour rampage around the town in what is thought to be an "unprecedented" attack.

It left Mr Fitzgerald with severe wounds to his forearm and legs. The retired BBC producer and director has undergone skins grafts at Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham. He is expected to return home later today.

Mrs Fitzgerald, 60, said she and her husband had gone to bed at around 11pm last Friday when they heard a loud bang in their garage. Her husband went to investigate and opened the garage to let the badger out before retiring to the front door to watch it go.

Instead of scuttling away, the animal headed straight for him and attacked.
Mrs Fitzgerald, who had come downstairs and was standing behind her husband at the time, said: "It was like something out of a horror movie, he was bleeding so badly. To hear your husband screaming and shouting in such pain, it was horrifying."

She called an ambulance which took Mr Fitzgerald to Worcestershire Royal Hospital, Worcester, but doctors decided he needed plastic surgery in Birmingham.

Mrs Fitzgerald said she had been to visit her husband several times in hospital, adding: "He is very badly shaken up and he's going to be permanently scarred."

Worcestershire Badger Society put down the badger after catching it in a trap laid on the Fitzgeralds' front lawn.