Badgered
"The fervor of Valentine’s Day has faded some now. The flowers have begun to wilt, the candy has gone a little stale, and our wallets are slightly thinner. But one fact remains: love is not a badger.
Initially this might seem to be an obvious enough proposition. After all, love is not a mammal, nor does love make a habit of dining on earthworms. Wisconsin does not have a prominent university whose mascot is love, and people certainly do not daydream about falling in badger. Someone possessing a more abstract mind than mine might be persuaded to point out some similarities, but, at least for now, we will assume that the differences outweigh the commonalities.
Badgers do not take kindly to being poked. I encourage you to fashion yourself a stout walking stick and go searching the hills and forests of America looking for a badger. I don’t care how tired he is when you come upon him, if you take that staff and give him an enthusiastic jab in the side, he will respond. I do not say this as an expert on badger behavior, but as a person who knows that most things with claws don’t take kindly to being prodded. When that perturbed creature realizes that you are on the other end of the stick, I can only hope that you are wearing chain mail. Love, on the other hand, is not so responsive. Whack it with a cane, shout at it, shower it with gifts, and still it might ignore you.
Badgers can also be put in cages. This tragedy is a grievous distinction, but true nonetheless. If, after you have sufficiently irritated the animal with your badger-poking device, you have on hand a metal enclosure and very good reflexes, you could feasibly catch him. He probably won’t be happy about this. If you keep him in there long enough, he might grow depressed and cease eating, waste away from a majestic specimen of nature to a shadow of his former self. You might even earn the unmitigated wrath of this column’s readership, you badger-trapping rascal. But, try as he might, that poor creature will not dissipate and slip through the bars. If there’s a badger in there when the sun goes down, it will not be a pear tree when the sun comes up. Not so with love. If you can even trick it into your box in the first place, it may well slip away once it realizes what has happened. And if you cage it up too long, it may transform into something else entirely.
Now that you’ve hiked through miles of dense underbrush to find a badger, nudged him soundly, and trapped him in a cage, there’s only one thing left to do: wrestle him. Gird up your loins, open the door, and do your best to pin that irate beast to the ground.
Perhaps you are detecting a hint of absurdity here. Badger wrestling? Have I taken you on this convoluted second person journey only to end with badger wrestling? That is probably the single most ridiculous thing you (or I) have ever heard. Lost in the middle of a forest, searching for a creature you aren’t even certain of finding, only to take any necessary measure to gain its attention so that you can attempt to hold it down for a ten count, after which you will presumably evacuate the premises as quickly as possible to save yourself from being scratched to pieces? It’s preposterous. If you tell anyone, they’ll think that you’re completely out of your mind. And that, my friends, is why love might just be a little like badger wrestling."
Initially this might seem to be an obvious enough proposition. After all, love is not a mammal, nor does love make a habit of dining on earthworms. Wisconsin does not have a prominent university whose mascot is love, and people certainly do not daydream about falling in badger. Someone possessing a more abstract mind than mine might be persuaded to point out some similarities, but, at least for now, we will assume that the differences outweigh the commonalities.
Badgers do not take kindly to being poked. I encourage you to fashion yourself a stout walking stick and go searching the hills and forests of America looking for a badger. I don’t care how tired he is when you come upon him, if you take that staff and give him an enthusiastic jab in the side, he will respond. I do not say this as an expert on badger behavior, but as a person who knows that most things with claws don’t take kindly to being prodded. When that perturbed creature realizes that you are on the other end of the stick, I can only hope that you are wearing chain mail. Love, on the other hand, is not so responsive. Whack it with a cane, shout at it, shower it with gifts, and still it might ignore you.
Badgers can also be put in cages. This tragedy is a grievous distinction, but true nonetheless. If, after you have sufficiently irritated the animal with your badger-poking device, you have on hand a metal enclosure and very good reflexes, you could feasibly catch him. He probably won’t be happy about this. If you keep him in there long enough, he might grow depressed and cease eating, waste away from a majestic specimen of nature to a shadow of his former self. You might even earn the unmitigated wrath of this column’s readership, you badger-trapping rascal. But, try as he might, that poor creature will not dissipate and slip through the bars. If there’s a badger in there when the sun goes down, it will not be a pear tree when the sun comes up. Not so with love. If you can even trick it into your box in the first place, it may well slip away once it realizes what has happened. And if you cage it up too long, it may transform into something else entirely.
Now that you’ve hiked through miles of dense underbrush to find a badger, nudged him soundly, and trapped him in a cage, there’s only one thing left to do: wrestle him. Gird up your loins, open the door, and do your best to pin that irate beast to the ground.
Perhaps you are detecting a hint of absurdity here. Badger wrestling? Have I taken you on this convoluted second person journey only to end with badger wrestling? That is probably the single most ridiculous thing you (or I) have ever heard. Lost in the middle of a forest, searching for a creature you aren’t even certain of finding, only to take any necessary measure to gain its attention so that you can attempt to hold it down for a ten count, after which you will presumably evacuate the premises as quickly as possible to save yourself from being scratched to pieces? It’s preposterous. If you tell anyone, they’ll think that you’re completely out of your mind. And that, my friends, is why love might just be a little like badger wrestling."