Saturday, September 18, 2010

Badger IQ vs. Letterboxer IQ



Lizman and I were returning to Boise from Sun Valley on Sunday and we decided to make a quick detour to find the "ROT8RS" letterbox that is about 8 or 9 miles from Mountain Home. As we were driving down the small two lane road in the middle of no where I spotted a badger on the left side of the road. Because we were traveling pretty quickly (speed limit 50 mph - we were doing about 40 mph) as soon as he spotted our car coming he ducked into one of those silver colored metal tubes that run under the road (for drainage). I mentioned to Lizman that maybe we could get a picture of him on our way back if we saw him out again near the road.

After finding the box we drove very slowly (about 30 mph) on our way back to I-84. We passed several silver tubes but there was no sign of the badger. As luck would have it we spotted him in the distance at the next tube and I handed Lizman the camera as we slowed way down. Sure enough as soon as he had the camera positioned to take a picture the little critter scampered into the tube again. We rolled the car up to the tube and sat there as we decided that we were more clever than the badger. We figured if we turned off the radio and stopped talking that eventually he would peek out of the tube and we would get the perfect picture of him.

We sat there holding our breath waiting and watching eagerly out of the right side of the car. Nothing. Lizman whispered to me that I should turn off the car's engine as he probably knew we were still there. Knowing that we were much smarter than he was it sounded like a great plan. I turned off the engine, we stopped talking again and held very still with the camera ready to snap. We waited and watched again out of the passenger side of the car with great anticipation. Nothing. We looked at each other, looked back out and still nothing.

Since we were sitting on the actual road with the car turned off I made sure to watch the rear view mirror between glances watching for the badger to resurface. Since we were in the middle of no where not a single car came our direction but still I wanted to be sure we were safe. We sat there waiting in complete silence and still nothing.

I turned my head slightly as I was watching the road behind us to look out the drivers side mirror and in my peripheral vision I noticed something from the other side of the street (about 8 feet away) was staring at me with two shrewd dark eyes. I slowly turned my head and sure enough there was the badger sitting there staring at us. I motioned to Lizman to hand me the camera and snapped as quickly as I could before he gave us one last head shake and waddled off into the sage brush out of sight. Obviously he had been sitting there the entire time watching us waiting and watching for him. Badger - 1 : Lizman and Blackvelvetrav - 0.

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