An anthology of some the best badger poetry you’ll ever read. Be warned: some are a little… um… naughty.
Our winner
Badger, Badger, glowing bright, caught on camera in the night
As, with a fleeting shutter swipe, we trace thy sly, mischievous stripe.
Our runners up
Snuffling in the stilly night, come badgers lined in black and white.
The moon looks down, it’s long to dawn, as brock plays chase across the lawn.
The badger’s plight cannot be understated:
Always sub-fusced, but never graduated.
The contenders
Aures caenosae non audiunt bonum. / Bis eum itaque clamabimus nomen!
[His muddy ears do not hear well. / So we must call his name twice].
The Magdalen menagerie,
Is often quite badgery
The badger walked out with the deer and the bat
And the Tower smiled down and said ‘Floreat’
The striped lawn beckons
To all and Brock.
Five centuries later, some things never quaver: the choir’s up the tower for May Morning dawn;
But the newest tradition is lower, and safer: refilling the holes out on New Buildings Lawn.
An anti-growth coalition,
In black and white form.
Rooting, shuffling over twilight grass,
Snouts against gardeners and tidy lawns.
Go on, you lot! You’ve had your fun
But when the dust has settled, the badger won
Badger, badger, scaling the wall,
Who is the naughtiest of them all?
It beckons me to join its clever antics;
Burrowing in vain, the earthly heretic
The mole and poor ratty were deeply in hock
To a miserly badger who called himself Brock.
One misty morning on Addison’s Walk,
A don named Jack learned that badgers could talk.
“The Badger was called Trufflehunter; he was the oldest and kindest of the three.”
So if you are Trufflehunter, please come and visit with me.
Badger, Badger, O, naughty Badger!
Calm, so quick, you sneaky Badger!
Would William of Waynflete (a bishop quite haughty)
Be fond of a lawn-killing badger that’s naughty?
The wind in the willows is quiet tonight,
so I’m sneakin’ and sniffin’ until it gets light
Said one horrified Don:
This has not been seen in time immemorial,
Now a badger in sub fusc at my Thursday tutorial!
Oxford oxen to the edge:
Badger badges all the rage
Sneaky naughty badger in its hideaway hole
Wreaking grassy havoc like a heinous life’s goal
Because badgers are black and white,
you can only see half of them…in the night
“Gaudeamus igitur!” we hear the badgers titter.
“We’ve left the lawn a shambles,” adds an unrepentant critter.
Badger badger quite contrary,
Please don’t wreck our fritillaries
Badger, Badger wherefore art thou Badger
Oh, there you are you little bugger.
Exploring, nocturnal, without TB
A badger, a wonderful sight, to see
I was always a lover of badgers
Until one of them bit my poor nadgers.
Badger, smiling, surveyed his excavation,
Heedless of the gardeners’ enervation.
A manicured lawn on velvet green, edged by a flower border
Ready to welcome that naughty Brock, enemy of such order.
Pushkin wrote about the wise cat on the old oak tree,
But the naughty badger of Magdalen has a biology degree
Drifting through russet heavens and the mammalian Milky Way
Fly always true o’ fossorial comet, star-spangled Mustelid
Once there were wolves and bears and lynxes but now the fiercest beast in a tamed land is a badger.
The old brock smiles as he eats a Tory.
Naughty badger eyes a kitty mild,
But, hatless, will eat a rabbit wild
Psst! I sit in your pigeon hole
Pet or I will chomp your parcel whole.
Winter paws take leaf in Oxford again
Muddy scrawls in the Walk, “I love Magdalen!”
Snuffling snout chews ballpoint pen
A sett meal in checkered badger den