Naturalist View July '09

I had several calls in the last two weeks regarding an unidentified animal in and about Saddlebrooke. Some thought that it might be a skunk or raccoon and described it as an animal with a white nose . This brought to mind several possibilities. Beside skunks and raccoons there are ring-tailed cats and coati’s.

As I sat at my computer last week the phone rang and a woman said she had taken a picture of this strange animal and said she would send me a picture. No sooner had she hung up when the phone rang and her neighbor called to say he had what he thought might be a raccoon in his yard. I grabbed my camera and headed for his house and discovered the culprit. A Badger!

A lot of people did not think that badgers lived in Arizona. No it was not a Snow- Bird from Wisconsin and I had come across one on the Rail X Ranch a couple of years ago but this is the first one I have seen in Saddlebrooke. I took several pictures then Dan Chase and I rounded up the youngster fed him and released him in the desert the next morning.