Police remove ‘rowdy badger’ holed up beside boxes of booze at California gas station
Pismo Beach police offers were called out Sunday night to remove an “angry badger” that had somehow made its way into a gas station, where it huddled in a corner next to boxes of Jameson whiskey.
“It’s not every day that we get a rowdy badger inside of a local business,” Officer Patrick Rockwood told The Tribune on Monday.
At about 11 p.m. Sunday night, police received a call about a raccoon at the Shell station at the corner of Spyglass Drive and Shell Beach Road, Rockwood said.
When police arrived at the station, they discovered that the animal was in fact not a raccoon, but a badger, Rockwood said.
“(The gas station) advised dispatch that the animal was extremely aggressive, which is on par with badgers,” Rockwood said. “They’re usually a little angry.”
Officers found the badger hiding beneath a sink in the back of the gas station beside the whiskey boxes, Rockwood said.
An officer captured the creature with an 8-foot snare pole, a tool that police use to catch stray dogs.
“Once they hunker down like that, you can get the snare around them pretty quickly,” Rockwood said. “Doesn’t look like the officer had too difficult of a time.”
The officer then took the badger outside and released it into nearby bushes, Rockwood said.
“They can be very aggressive if they’re cornered, but they generally live in solitude,” Rockwood said.
The department had fun reporting on the incident in its tongue-in-cheek Facebook post.
“Units responded last night to a report of a highly combative subject trespassing at the Shell Beach Gas Station. The subject, identified as Mr. Angry Badger, was located far too close to the whiskey, which may be why efforts to negotiate a peaceful outcome were unsuccessful,” the post read.
“Although the subject made false allegations that officers were badgering him, he was safely taken into custody and escorted out of the building,” it concluded.
Rockwood noted that the badger was safely removed with the whiskey stash intact, which is more than can be said for a similar animal who went on a bender in Poland in 2015.
In that case, a badger was found “drunk on a Polish beach,” lounging among seven empty beer bottles, The Guardian reported.
“The badger is believed to have stolen the booze from fellow beach-goers, before removing the beer caps with her teeth,” the Guardian wrote.
The badger was unconscious for two days while she recovered at a nearby animal shelter, according to The Guardian.
Report badger sightings
In California, badgers are labeled a species of special concern, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife is interested in tracking their whereabouts and learning more about their behavior.
“Although badgers are widely distributed in the state, they may be comparatively uncommon or absent from some areas where they historically occurred,” the agency says on its website. “Badgers are primarily solitary, although breeding pairs and family groups are sometimes observed.”
If you see a badger, you can report the sighting online at bit.ly/3n3qYeA.
This story was originally published April 24, 2023 at 4:16 PM with the headline "Police remove ‘rowdy badger’ holed up beside boxes of booze at California gas station."
