In my teen years, I met a lactating female badger that was caught in a gopher trap. She was a rather unhappy badger, so I went and shot a ground squirrel, found a stick, and as she inspected the dead gopher, managed to use the stick to depress the spring and release her from the trap. My good deed for the day was done, and she hadn’t seemed nearly as aggressive as the stories about badgers had been.
The next day, as I walked around the field with my single shot 22, she showed up again. So I shot another ground squirrel, walked over, picked up the body and tossed it toward her. We spent the summer hunting together – she was so low to the ground that I had to walk to the gopher hole. On the other hand, just getting down the hole didn’t protect the wounded Columbia ground squirrel – she could smell the squirrel, the blood, and usually only took a few minutes to bring the squirrel out. She wasn’t something to pet, like my Pomeranian, but the two-species hunting partnership took more rodents, and probably fed her offspring better.
Trego's Mountain Ear 