OF THE HONEYE BADGERE

From "Additiouns to the Boke of Sir Iohn Mandeville" (Geoffrey Chaucer hath a blog) -- attn. Matt:

And in the lande of Ynde ther ys the Honeye Badger. And yt ys seyde to be somdeel bad-asse.

The Honeye Badger doth grabben at snakes, the which is grosse, and yt doth yiven chase to jackales. Of the many wondirs Ich have seene in my traveles, no thing is just as crazye as the Honeye Badger.

For Pliny the elder saith that the Honey Badger is the beaste yn the world that is moost wythout feare. The Honey Badger reketh nat an oystre concerning any matter.

For yn yts mouth the Honeye Badger will seyze a cobra and then it shal runne back-wardes. Yif a snake crepeth up ynto a tree, Honeye Badger careth nat. Honey Badgere reketh nat an oystre concerninge any matter; swich a beeste as the Honey Badger doth take that which it desireth, with no let or hindrance.

By Jesu, yt ys a wondir to wacchen the Honeye Badgere dig. Of its digginge no man may maken comparaison. The Honeye Badger, god woot, ys reallye prettye bad-asse. Thei have no regard for eny other animal whatsoevir.

Yt ys seyd by the men of that contree that yf a Honeye Badger cometh to a hous full of bees, the Honey Badger careth nat. The Honey Badger reketh nat an oystre concerninge any matter. The Honey Badger chargeth anon-right ynto the mansioun of the bees to eten of the litel wormes, the which aren ycleped larva. And thogh the bees do speare the Honeye Badger wyth an thousande stinges, the Honeye Badger reketh nat an oystre, for yt is hungrye and careth nat concerninge the stinges of the bees. No thing can make delay for the Honeye Badger whan hunger possesseth yt. O what a crazye horesonne thys Honey Badger ys!

It occurs to me that I have some badger-related content at the other blog that I never cross-posted here...

You can't go back again

From "Some Kind of Explanation":

I'm suspect of the phrase, "You can't go back again". Are my feelings of unease justified?

Like so many things it depends on context. For example, at a family party my son reacted to exactly this phrase with rage when it formed my reply to his request to make a third trip to the dessert buffet. Likewise, if you were leaving your much-loved pet otter Fifibelle in the care of an avant-garde chef you were friends with at university because you were going away at short notice for a weekend in Minehead and nobody else was available, and then just as you were leaving the premises your eye was drawn to a blackboard bearing the legend “Chef’s Special Today: Mustelid Marinière” and then you heard a muffled squeal and suddenly felt an urge to return to Fifibelle “for one more cuddle”, but no sooner had you uttered this request than you were firmly propelled out of the restaurant door into the cold grey high street as a pitiless voice growled “You can’t go back again”, you would be right to feel unease.

 (One can often get useful effects out of the transformation "Other -> Otter" -- as in this bit from the relevant Wikipedia article:

Levinas talks of the Otter in terms of insomnia and wakefulness. It is an ecstasy, or exteriority toward the Otter that forever remains beyond any attempt at full capture, this otterness is interminable (or infinite); even in murdering an otter, the otterness remains, it has not been negated or controlled.)

See also.

Deeds of dorkness

"I'll go hunt the badger by owl-light:
'Tis a deed of darkness." -- Ferdinand in The Duchess of Malfi

PS I had not appreciated the extent to which the play had penetrated crime fiction and the like. For instance, there is a TV thriller called "Badger by Owl-Light." And more famously, the wonderful line "Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle. She died young." was picked up and used by Agatha Christie in a Marple story, Sleeping Murder, that I don't remember reading.

Imaginary zoos with real badgers

From John Berryman's strange 1945 story "The Imaginary Jew" (Kenyon Review via twitter):

Now and then I went to the zoo in lower Central Park and watched with interest the extraordinary behavior of a female badger. For a certain time she quickly paced the round of her cage. Then she would approach the sidewall from an angle in a determined, hardly perceptible, unhurried trot; suddenly, when an inch away, point her nose up it, follow her nose up over her back, turning a deft and easy somersault, from which she emerged on her feet moving swiftly and unconcernedly away, as if the action had been no affair of hers, indeed she had scarcely been present. There was another badger in the cage who never did this, and nothing else about her was remarkable; but this competent disinterested somersault she enacted once every five or ten minutes as long as I watched her,—quitting the wall, by the way, always at an angle in fixed relation to the angle at which she arrived at it. It is no longer possible to experience the pleasure I knew each time she lifted her nose and I understood again that she would not fail me, or feel the mystery of her absolute disclaimer,—she has been taken away or died.

Polecaterpillars

Ermine moth:

Src: Shadoxhurst Garden

Ferret legging, possible aftermath of

Via Matt P (see also):

"A pencil-necked little weasel"

Legislator apologizes for weasel words (NYT):

Opening himself up to the full retaliation of the supernatural world, Mr. Dean singled out Mr. Gaiman for having received a $45,000 payment last year for a four-hour speaking engagement. Mr. Dean said Mr. Gaiman, “who I hate,” was a “pencil-necked little weasel who stole $45,000 from the state of Minnesota,” The Star Tribune reported.

Embracing Mr. Dean’s description of him, a self-deprecating Mr. Gaiman responded in a post on his personal blog, titled “The Opinions of a Pencil-Necked Weasel-Thief…,” writing that it was “kind of nice to make someone’s hate list.” Mr. Gaiman added that while he liked being compared to pencils (“You can draw or write things with pencils”), he did not appreciate being called a thief.

Killer stoats

Famous baseball statistician Bill James, who “played a prominent role in the Michael Lewis best-seller Moneyball,” is now aiming his science at serial killers.

James’ wise-beard status can be traced to a series of self-published books he wrote in the late ’70s while working at a Kansas pork-and-beans factory. Each carried the name Baseball Abstract and contained a mix of dust-dry stoats and nimble prose that James used to debunk some of the sport’s most deeply held beliefs.  

(Wired via the Rumpus.)