Badger Strangling

Most people will agree that there are many ways to skin a cat. But far less will acknowledge that there are even more ways of strangling a badger.

The proverbial merit of cat skinning has been around in both Britain and America since the mid 1800s and writers such as Charles Kingsley and Mark Twain both made reference to the fact that there were numerous ways to go about this quite barbaric act of anti-cattism. Despite drawing our attention to it neither Kingsley nor Twain ever revealed any method that stretched beyond the use of cream or butter for such acts of cat-icide.

While cat skinning has ever since, enjoyed a fairly prominent life in our everyday speak the literal act of strangling badgers has lingered morbidly in the shadows for many centuries, leading Britain's largest wild carnivore to turn into something of a shitebag.

Throttling badgers became popular in London in the 16th century and many doctors used to prescribe a badger a day for strangulation to help cure stress among the aristocracy. There also sprung up a thriving trade in black market badgers. In many cases rat catchers found that there was far better money in the procurement of live badgers than that of deceased rats.

Throughout the 17th and 18th century badger strangling was viewed much the same as child buggery. No-one really cared as long as you were rich. Charles Dickens spent a "year at sea" as he called it, camping in the Norfolk Broads staking out sets in the hope of strangling a badger but he ultimately felt as though he was not cut out for such a life. It is said that his character Oliver Twist was based on a Badger that he stalked for many months and was unable to strangle and ultimately fell in love with. These reports are like any other reports of this nature, completely unsubstantiated and quite probably just made up.

The outlawing of badgerstrangling came as something of a relief among the badger community but since then no badger has been able to comment on this although one stoat did speak on behalf of a badger friend of his saying that while he "thought it fair to outlaw the strangling of badgers he did not therefore see how other forms of badger murder should be tolerated".

Other fads such as badger mutilation and badger exploding did enjoy brief stints in the 60s of being the number one way to get your own back on a badger but strangling has always been and will always be the number one method of disposal.

I know that this whole things seems a bit sinister but if your motive is correct and you feel as though it is you or the badger then self defence still applies. If it's a choice between you or a badger seeing the next Christmas, ask yourself this, Do badgers believe in Jesus?